For Mehan, everything from the menacing weather reports to the sudden reversals in plans made the event special. “I really love a challenge,” she says.

Entre

preneurship 101

Mehan was raised in a series of small towns north of Waterloo where her father, a textile engineer born in India, spent his spare time running convenience stores and other successful small businesses. “I’m constantly saying to my Dad: ‘I’m so glad you owned all those businesses because that’s where I got a fundamental business education.” She continues: “At a very early age, I had real-life understanding of what profit and loss meant.”

After graduating from the University of Waterloo and holding a few marketing and public relations jobs in publicly listed tech companies, such as SAP Canada, Harris Corporation and Teledyne DALSA Inc., Mehan accepted a temporary assignment within the IR team at OpenText, Canada’s largest software company. She didn’t know that OpenText, which had been out of favour following a rocky German acquisition two years earlier, was announcing plans to double the company’s size by purchasing a competitor, Hummingbird, just as she was arriving.

“Within my first three weeks, I had to figure out how to message a hostile bid; I had to prepare year-end earnings, press releases and an MD&A; and had to organize and manage an analyst day where we advised 22 sell-side analysts on why Hummingbird was a good investment for us,” recalls Mehan.

Looking back, Mehan realizes that this trial by fire prepared her for life at OpenText, which has since completed an additional 14 acquisitions. “I barely slept for those first three weeks, but it was worth it,” she says. “Nothing fazes me now.”

Mehan credits her early experiences with her father and an innately empathetic nature for her aptitude in the IR space. She was soon hired as an IR specialist at OpenText and then promoted twice to her current position.

“You have to be compassionate,” Mehan says. “You have to sympathize with the fact that the person on the other end of the phone could either be making millions of dollars or losing millions of dollars.” She continues: “When you understand that, you understand the aggression and hysteria that make the capital markets run.”

Mentoring Guru

Mehan’s transition to IR was eased by having Greg Secord, OpenText’s Vice President of IR, act as her mentor. “Greg told me that a year in IR is the equivalent of five years’ working experience. And I’ve come to think that three weeks at OpenText is the equivalent of five years working anywhere else,” she laughs.

Mehan joined CIRI in 2007 and volunteered for the Ontario Chapter’s mentorship program. She saw an opportunity to improve the program by matching mentors and mentees via phone conversations that allowed her to better gauge the personalities involved. "There’s no single, traditional path in IR, so mentors are really important,” says Mehan.

In 2009, Mehan joined CIRI’s Ontario Chapter Board to run its mentorship program, which processes an average of

20 matches each year. In 2012, Mehan ledthe launch of the successful Mentorship Breakfast Series – fireside chats in which senior IROs provide tips on how to achieve success in IR. Mehan is consulted often by other CIRI Chapters on the success of Ontario’s program and several Chapters have modeled their programs after Ontario’s. It’s initiatives like the Mentorship Breakfast Series and the Ontario Professional of the Year Award – an award recognizing excellence and volunteerism in IR with the winner being decided by the Ontario Chapter membership via an online vote – that earned Mehan the Belle Mulligan Award for Leadership in Investor Relations last year. Mehan is also incoming President of the CIRI Ontario Chapter. 

Thanks to the winding path that brought Mehan to her current position at OpenText, she deeply understands the value of an organization like CIRI. She is co-chairing this year’s CIRI Conference, and feels that the theme – Rise to the Challenge: A Higher Standard of IR – is particularly apt.

“CIRI has been instrumental in my professional development. The programming has allowed me to keep abreast of current developments, and the people that I’ve met have been invaluable,” Mehan says. “The bottom line is that CIRI helps me to be better at my job. And that’s the goal of the conference: we’re challenging attendees to raise the bar higher for themselves and return from the conference with tips they can implement immediately to improve their performance.”