Jill Schnarr Chief Social Innovation & Communications Officer, TELUS

With over 30 years of telecommunications industry experience, Jill is a dynamic and engaging leader with a natural ability to build strategy and enable collaboration. She has significantly influenced TELUS’ reputation as a global leader in social purpose and corporate citizenship, enabling TELUS to be the most respected and trusted telco brand in Canada. As TELUS’ Chief Social Innovation and Communications Officer, she leads corporate communications, media relations, public affairs, brand marketing, sponsorships, social impact investing and community investment.

Notably, TELUS was recognized as the most valuable Telco Brand in Canada, increasing 23% over the past year and leading the industry for the first time in the company’s history with a 2022 value of $10.1 billion. She has ensured our social purpose approach focuses on business benefit, enabling every dollar invested in the community to return over 4 times back to TELUS in business impact and 150% to the community in societal impact.

Jill leads TELUS Days of Giving, facilitating over 60,000 volunteers globally in 2022 alone, and our Team TELUS Cares programs, giving more than 10 million volunteer hours from TELUS since 2000. She has launched major marketing campaigns including We Give Where We Live, Go Pink, Rise Above, Share Love, All Connected, Million Hours, Most Giving Company in the World, and this year’s Let’s Make the Future Friendly campaign.

Jill was recognized as the 2021 Corporate Leader of the Year by BC Business, one of Canada’s Distinctive Women, one of the Most Influential Women in Vancouver, one of Ad Age’s 2022 Leading Women and as Most Innovative Leader by the Canadian Women in Communications. Under Jill’s leadership, TELUS was acknowledged as the Most Philanthropic Corporation in the World by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, one of Strategy Magazines Top Brands of the Year and was awarded the Prime Minister’s Inaugural Corporate Volunteer Award.

Jill earned her Honours Business Administration degree from the Richard Ivey School of Business, completed her Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation from the University of Waterloo, and achieved her Masters of Business Administration from the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria in 2018, winning the gold medal for top student and best overall MBA thesis. Jill has also attended Executive Education programs at INSEAD, Rotman School of Business, University of British Columbia, Sauder School of Business, and Harvard University.

Jill is a board member of the TELUS Friendly Future Foundation and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and served as a director on the BC Women’s Hospital Foundation for 7 years, and as a TELUS Vancouver Community Board member for 6 years. She was a Board Director and Chair of the Women’s Leadership Circle on the Vancouver Board of Trade. She served on the fundraising cabinet for BC Women’s Hospital Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, and was Co-Chair of Glow, the inaugural BC Women’s Hospital Gala.

Jill lives in Vancouver, BC with her husband, David, her two teenage sons, Dylan and Andrew, their two cats and two dogs. She loves beautiful British Columbia and goes camping in her Airstream on Hornby Island during the summer, and skis at Big White and Whistler in the winter months.