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legal expertise, but perhaps more importantly, they sparked her passion for
leadership and her understanding that only she could control the direction
and trajectory of her career.
The work at Cominco’s extensive operations in the Kootenays was wideranging
and challenging: Nicole was involved in a variety of interesting and
difficult matters, including major construction projects, the expansion of
generating capacity at the Waneta hydroelectric facility, the sale of the Brilliant
Dam, the closure and decommissioning of the Kimberley Mine and
the sale of Cominco’s electronic materials business. She had the opportunity
to gain experience in a number of practice areas, including mergers
and acquisitions, labour and employment (in strongly unionized work settings),
environmental law and intellectual property. Cominco also gave her
opportunities to develop her leadership and management skills, including
by completing an executive education program at the Richard Ivey School
of Business in London, Ontario.
It was also a challenging and “interesting” place to be one of the only
women in a senior, professional role. When Nicole started at Cominco, there
were still posters of semi-clothed women on the walls of some of the lunch
rooms in the plants. This was not unusual for the early 1980s, but the
posters would not stay up for long: Nicole, a devout feminist, demanded
(successfully, of course) that the posters be removed. This would not be the
last time Nicole faced the challenges and inequalities that so many women
did—and do—face working in male-dominated industries. Nicole’s experience
at Cominco allowed her to better understand how systemic barriers
and both conscious and unconscious biases impede the advancement of
women within many organizations. Nicole later turned that experience into
the foundation of her work promoting equity for women in leadership positions
and the retention of women in the practice of law.
In 1998, as part of her long-term vision of relocating to Vancouver, Nicole
chose to move back into private practice, leaving Cominco to join the Trail
firm of McEwan, Harrison, where she enjoyed a general litigation practice,
running trials and appeals. Nicole knew that it would likely be a challenge
to break into Vancouver’s legal community. Thus, she set out to find opportunities
that would serve the dual purposes of continuing her volunteerism
and providing the strong connections she would ultimately need to launch
a successful career in Vancouver. She found those opportunities in appointments
to the UBC Board of Governors in 2002 and later to the BC Transmission
Corporation. One of the contacts she made through the UBC Board of
Governors was Lyall Knott, Q.C., a partner at Clark Wilson LLP. In 2004, she
moved to Vancouver and joined Clark Wilson, where she soon became head
of the firm’s labour and employment group.