Nathalie Megann, CPIR, ICD.D
Sometimes great careers start with a mistake – in Nathalie Megann’s case, this was a misheard word spoken at a crucial moment.
While pursuing a graduate degree from Dalhousie University, Megann was working as a flight attendant for regional carrier Air Atlantic. One day the CEO of the airline happened to be sitting in business class, and she told him that she was getting her degree in public administration. “‘Oh, public relations?’ he said to me. ‘We could use some help with that,’ and he set me up with the Manager of Public Relations for the airline,” laughs Megann. “That was how it all started.”
Since that day over 30 years ago, Megann, who took CIRI’s helm as President and CEO in September, has spent her career in public relations, corporate communications, corporate affairs and – most importantly – investor relations.
For her, the throughline in a varied career has been aviation. The daughter of a pilot who operated an air transport business, Megann flew for the first time at just two weeks old, when her parents travelled with her from Newfoundland to Joliette, Quebec aboard a Widgeon, an amphibious aircraft much like the one shown in the early ‘80s TV show Fantasy Island.
Megann’s love of aviation led her to public relations and later investor relations; this passion has also been the source of a number of professional shining moments.
She recalls, for instance, an IR roadshow she led while Director of Corporate Communications and Investor Relations for Jazz Aviation. The roadshow showcased for stakeholders the world’s launch of the CRJ-705 (later renamed the CRJ-900) regional jet. This aircraft accompanied Megann across the country as she made stops along Jazz’s route network.
“That roadshow was a lot of fun, and very well received,” she recalls.
A Blank Sheet of Paper
Working in public relations for 10 years at Air Atlantic, which was under Canadian Airlines’ umbrella and so part of ‘the blue team,’ gave Megann a solid grounding in everything from marketing and advertising to managing the media and corporate communications.
When Air Atlantic went bankrupt, she moved to the ‘red team,’ or a series of regional carriers owned by Air Canada. As five of those regional carriers became Jazz Aviation, she helped the company go public in 2006; today, Jazz is owned by Chorus Aviation, where Megann headed investor relations until 2022.
"At the time, I didn’t know what investor relations was,” she says, “until my CFO (Allan Rowe) said to me: ‘I want you to take on the investor relations role when we take this company public. And the first thing you need to do is get in touch with CIRI.’” Learning the IR ropes and then creating an IR function from a blank sheet of paper was a challenge she looks back on fondly.
For IROs today, Megann offers three pieces of career advice, the first of which is: “Never stop learning.”
“Education,” she says, “builds credibility through knowledge. It makes you think differently, more strategically.”
Here, she has undeniably walked the talk, having first gotten her CPIR designation in 2013 and then her director designation (ICD.D) from the Institute of Corporate Directors at the Rotman School of Management in 2018. She used the latter credential to serve on the Board of Tourism Nova Scotia when it was still a Crown corporation.
Her second piece of career advice – “Make yourself the go-to person in your field” – is also one backed by personal experience.
“If people within Chorus wanted to know what the market sentiment was, they asked me because of the relationships I held,” she says.
A New Opportunity Arises
The pandemic represented an enormous challenge for many IROs, Megann among them. At one particularly dire moment, Chorus Aviation was operating at 10% of capacity and had laid off more than 60% of its staff, with some of those remaining taking 25% to 50% pay cuts.
“After the pandemic,” she says, “it was time for me to switch gears. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I needed a new challenge outside of the aviation industry.”
Although Megann enjoyed gardening, travelling, and exercising, all of which occupied her days during her yearlong retirement from Chorus Aviation, she immediately said “yes” in April, when CIRI contacted her for help on an interim basis after Yvette Lokker’s departure was announced and while the Board hired a recruiter and began a national executive search.
Megann, who has belonged to CIRI for almost 20 years and has served on its Board for seven of them, soon decided to throw her hat in the ring for the open CEO position.
More than anything, it’s Megann’s third and final piece of career advice that best reflects her leadership philosophy.
“Always be humble,” she says. “As an IRO, you want to speak with confidence, but you don’t want to be arrogant. It’s all in how you carry yourself and how you interact with others. You need to act like an authority, but it’s important to be respectful, too. IR is about relationships and the capital markets community. A mutual respect is critical to achieving effective investor relations.”
Looking back, Megann believes that there has been a considerable amount of serendipity in the career path she’s taken. “Often,” she says, “things just happened at the right time.”
When she was selected to be CIRI’s next CEO, she was open to another unplanned twist in her career path and she accepted without hesitation. This role, she says, is “a wonderful way for me to give back to a profession that has given me so much. I’m excited about the future of CIRI.”