Vancouver, BC, Canada - August 15, 2014, Vancouver, BC, Canada - Westport Innovations Inc., a clean energy engineering company, announced that Jill Bodkin has been elected chairman of the board of directors.
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Ms. Bodkin joined the Westport Board in July 2008. Earlier, she was instrumental in institutional fund and venture capital investment which launched Westport.
Ms. Bodkin has chaired Westport's Human Resources and Compensation, and Audit Committees. She brings a significant amount of public company and international capital markets expertise, and a distinguished background with the BC Securities Commission and Ernst & Young.
A Director of public and private companies, Ms. Bodkin is also the President of Yaletown Venture Partners VCC, Vancouver, and on Boards of Valemount Glacier Destinations, Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
She is a Governor and former Chair of the Vancouver Board of Trade, as well as a former Director of the Laurentian Bank of Canada, KCTS 9 Television (Seattle based Pacific Northwest PBS station), and President of the Board of Pacific Coast Public Television.
She has served on the Audit Oversight Council for the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, advisory boards on investment and trade to Canadian and British Columbia Cabinet Ministers, and as a Trustee of policy think tanks, including the Thailand Development Research Institute, the Institute for Research in Public Policy in Canada, and the Canada West Foundation.
After her early career in trade and finance in Canada's capital, Ms. Bodkin was appointed, in 1981, British Columbia's first woman Deputy Minister, responsible for financial institutions, then served as founding Chair of the BC Securities Commission.
From 1987 to 1996, she was a Corporate Finance Partner with Ernst & Young, advising on financing technology companies and capital projects in North America, China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and the far east of Russia.
Her mid-career graduate studies were in public finance at the Maxwell School, and she has been Executive in Residence at UBC's Faculty of Business. She has been honoured for Lifetime Achievement in Finance, and with the Governor General's Canada 125 medal.
Former Chairman, John Beaulieu, will remain on the board as a director and has been awarded the title "Chairman Emeritus".
Joseph Caron, formerly of Westport's Advisory Board, has been appointed to the Board of Directors.
Mr. Caron began his international relations career in 1972 as a member of the Trade Commissioner Service.
His knowledge of the Japanese language led to assignments in Japan for over 17 years in government and business, including the Canadian Embassy as Minister Plenipotentiary and Head of Chancery. He also subsequently held several positions related to Asian and international economic affairs for the Canadian Government, including serving the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat of the Privy Council Office.
From 2001 to 2005, he served as Canadian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China with concurrent accreditation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Mongolia.
In 2005, he was named Canadian Ambassador to Japan and, in 2008, he served as High Commissioner to the Republic of India.
Mr. Caron has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo and York University, Toronto. He serves as a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada as well as an Honorary Research Associate at the Institute of Asian Research of the University of British Columbia.
Mr. Caron is a member of the Board of Directors of Manulife Financial Corporation and Vancouver International Airport. ■