Campaign Leadership

Geoff Beattie's Biography

Geoff Beattie (LLB 1984) is President & CEO of the Woodbridge Company Limited, which is a private holding company for the Thomson family. He is Deputy Chairman of Thomson-Reuters, an information company created by Thomson's purchase of Reuters this past April. He also serves as Chairman for CTVglobemedia and a Director for the Royal Bank of Canada.

Prior to these current positions, Geoff practiced law with the firm of Tory, Tory Deslauriers & Binnington as an Associate and as a Partner, where he specialized in corporate and securities law with an emphasis on merchant banking and private equity investments. From 1987 to 1990, he has also held the position of Vice-President for CIBC Wood Gundy Inc.
Geoff has demonstrated his commitment to higher education in several ways. In recent years, he has been an active volunteer right here at Western, assisting our President's Council with ongoing fundraising efforts subsequent to the close of Campaign Western in 2004. He and his family have been generous donors to several important causes across Canada and Ontario, including his alma mater where the Beattie Family Speaker Series in Business Law has been established as tribute to Geoff's philanthropy.

Geoff also currently serves as volunteer on the Dean's Advisory Board at the Joseph Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto, and he is also a Trustee with the University Health Network.

While Geoff currently resides in Toronto when he is not traveling extensively on business, he is a Londoner at heart. He grew up in London, where he attended Oakridge High School before coming to Western, and his mother and father, a retired lawyer who practiced in London, still reside in the city. Geoff's siblings, too, are Western grads. Brother Scott, who is Chairman and CEO of Elizabeth Arden Incorporated, earned bachelor and masters degrees from the Ivey School of Business, while Geoff's sister, Louise, earned her Western degree in Sociology.