When Shibani Ahuja was considering leaving her job as an insurance- company executive in the Philippines to return to Canada, TD Bank Group (TD) was her first choice. “I joined TD because of their dedication to diversity and inclusion,” she says. “I knew I could be my authentic self.”
As a member of the LGBTQ2+ community, TD’s progressive diversity and inclusion policies and practices appealed to Ahuja. In 2017, she was hired as an associate vice president of enterprise business solutions in human resources. The next year, she was promoted to vice president, enterprise solutions and enablement, before moving into a completely different area of the Bank.
In November 2020, Ahuja became vice president, digital performance, Canadian personal banking. “I had been working at an insurance company in Asia, and TD brought me in and moved me around,” she says. “There’s no rigid career path for anyone here.”
Mentorship has been an important part of Ahuja’s journey – in particular, the Women in Leadership ‘Coffee Connections’ program through which she had a 30-minute phone call with an executive vice president. “When they asked, ‘What can I do for you and your career?’ I asked them to introduce me to someone else, to give me even more opportunities to grow my network,” says Ahuja.
Ahuja is a mentor herself, through her role as chair of the LGBTQ2+ women’s committee, which she established in 2019 to help ensure that TD is attracting, developing and promoting LGBTQ2+ women. She also mentors through TD’s Each One, Teach One initiative with Black community members, and several other enterprise programs.
Support was also on hand in July 2021, when Ahuja started maternity leave just two months after starting in an expanded role, with plans to return to work after three months and trade parental leave with her partner. “My leadership team was tremendously supportive of my unique needs given my early return to work and was willing to accommodate a flexible arrangement,” she says. “TD has a trifecta of caring – for our customers, colleagues and communities.”
Aliona Arestova is another employee who has felt supported since she was hired permanently in 2015 as a quality engineering manager, then promoted to senior IT manager a few years later. She learned about TD during a consulting role with the Bank in 2014, and her manager at that time was expanding his team. “His vision for growth was so compelling, I wanted to be part of that,” she says.
Arestova values the informal mentoring she receives from colleagues. “If I need to bounce ideas off someone to highlight my blind spots and help brainstorm a solution to a problem, there are many people I can reach out to,” she says. “Collaboration is one of the key elements of our team – it takes a village to innovate and think about things differently.”
Arestova’s career decisions were driven by her desire to look at a different aspect of technology and continue to build her leadership skills. “I’ve never had anyone at TD say no to me – TD has paid for internal and external courses that have helped build my skills as a manager and leader.”
Although Ahuja and Arestova have missed working in person with their colleagues throughout the pandemic, they have maintained connections through virtual coffee chats and community events, as well as video calls with their teams.
“I’m getting messages from colleagues saying they miss me,” says Ahuja. “There’s a genuine warmth and camaraderie when you work at TD – we’re like a family.”
