A drive for diversity

Lally Rementilla, CMA, encourages the development of alternative cultural voices in business

By Robert Colman

Although Canada is considered a multicultural country, there is still a perception that the voices of minority groups and women aren’t heard in many spheres. Some businesses are trying to address this by making it their mission to support diversity and encourage individuals to strive for larger goals. Lally Rementilla, CMA, is an example of how such a culture can create industry leaders and diverse, community-oriented individuals.

Rementilla’s story is an impressive one. She moved to Canada with her family from the Philippines at the age of 21 to start a new life in a new country. Within 12 years she had gone from working phones at AT&T Canada’s Network Systems Group to being an area vice-president for Lucent Technologies Canada (a spin-off of AT&T). And a year ago, she moved on to become director of business planning and analysis for Lavalife Inc., one of the world’s largest technology-based dating services. 

In her current role, she leads a team responsible for supporting the company’s corporate finance, corporate development and business development initiatives. As such, she played an integral role in the recent purchase of Lavalife by Memberworks Inc., a marketer of affiliation programs that offers member discounts on everyday products.  The deal closed in April 2004 with Memberworks paying .5 million in cash for the business.

“Our role was to prepare the data and analyze the key performance indicators to provide insight into the value of the company for potential investors,” she says.

Rementilla had a couple of reasons for moving to Lavalife. Primarily, after spending 12 years at Lucent, she felt she needed a change. “I wanted to become a hip accountant,” she says with a smile. “To do it, I got my CMA through the executive CMA program and then moved to Lavalife.”

Besides having an interest in exploring the cutting edge innovations at Lavalife, she was also attracted by the company’s culture. “I wanted to be more involved in a consumer-based business and the Internet. In this job I get to learn a lot about the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) process while also managing financial matters. Lavalife is also culturally diverse, which is very important to me.”

Inspirational leadership

It was the cultural diversity and the encouragement she received at AT&T Canada’s Network Systems Group and Lucent that made her stay with those organizations as long as she did. While working at AT&T Canada, Rementilla worked part-time completing her MBA at York University.

“While working at AT&T, I encountered very strong and inspirational leaders, one of them being Carly Fiorina who is the CEO of Hewlett-Packard and has been dubbed Forbes Magazine’s Most Powerful Woman in Business,” she says. “It’s partly who you work with and partly a company’s values that allow an individual to move up the ladder the way I did. Companies that really value diversity will take the time to help develop individuals. To have direct bosses and internal mentors that encourage this is very important.”

Rementilla singles out Carol Stephenson, a former CEO of Lucent Technologies Canada, as one of the key figures in her development. It was with Stephenson’s encouragement that she gave her first talk on women in senior management at The Conference Board of Canada. Since then, she has addressed the topic in a number of forums across Canada.

When she left Lucent, Rementilla was area vice-president of finance and contract management. Her unit was in charge of the carrier side of the business — selling hardware, software and services to the likes of Bell Canada, AT&T Canada and Telus Mobility. She was in charge of overall financial management and analysis — pricing structures, profitability, maximizing revenues and productivity.

Community support

Rementilla doesn’t take her success for granted and tries to give back to the community what it gave her — by helping people in similar situations that she faced get a helping hand. She serves as treasurer of the board of directors of Innoversity, a not-for-profit organization committed to increasing diversity in media and cultural institutions.

“Innoversity was founded three years ago to promote cultural diversity in media in general,” she says. “The Innoversity Creative Summit is the main focus of the organization’s activities. The conference brings together people from broadcasting and other media. It’s a venue in which individuals can pitch their ideas for documentaries, television pilots and more. It’s a place for people to connect with others in their field to exchange ideas. We also present awards to organizations that contribute to this cause.”

Rementilla is also a member of the board of directors of Canadian Women in Communications (CWC). CWC is a national, bilingual organization dedicated to the advancement of women in the communications industry through strategic networking, targeted professional development and meaningful recognition. Rementilla credits her involvement with the CWC as one of the key enablers for her career shift from telecommunications to new media.

She also currently serves on the board of directors of Theatre Passe Muraille, a comparatively large alternative theatre company in Toronto. “I’ve been on the board of the theatre since 1999,” she says. “I’ve always been interested in the theatre and find that the experience has balanced well with my corporate business experience. The environments are so very different that I learn unique skills from each that support the other. You see the full scope and challenge of a business when you work for a non-profit that you don’t see working for a large corporation.”

Rementilla is still learning a lot in her new position at Lavalife and was involved in the launch of a new service called Lavalife Mobile, which allows members of the online dating service to search for other singles in an area and exchange text messages with them anywhere and at any time from their mobile phones.

“The planning for this service was only in its very early stages when I arrived,” she notes. “We started doing the financial modeling to establish its potential at that time.” The service went live in early February and it’s still keeping her and her team (which includes fellow CMA Ian Burnett) busy.

Rementilla likes where she and the company are right now. “As Lavalife grows, it is developing a diverse group of people from a wide variety of backgrounds — some who have been with the company since its inception, and others, like me, who bring experience from a diverse array of corporations.”

Her strong practical experience, along with her MBA and CMA designation, makes for a powerful combination that will no doubt take her still further. “The CMA has helped me in my career by providing strategic insights that are necessary to perform well in a high-level corporate finance function,” she says. “It was an important addition to my skill set.”

Robert Colman is the editor-in-chief of CMA Management.

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