Women in Business: June 5, 2025

Lindsay Hillcoat is the Executive Director of Student Services & International Relations at the Schulich School of Business. She is a Schulich MBA ’10, and has spent the past eleven years in a variety of admissions and international relations leadership roles within Schulich. Prior to joining Schulich, Lindsay’s early career was spent working with social entrepreneurs and in the non-profit sector here in Toronto and internationally in West Africa and South Asia.

Penny Wise is 3M’s Vice-President, Global Public Policy and Communications, bringing nearly 25 years of global brand, communications and marketing experience to the role and is based out of the 3M global headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a passionate advocate for women in STEM and business.

Originally from Canada, Penny began her 3M career at the Canadian head office in London, Ontario. She has held a variety of progressive senior leadership roles in business, commercialization, brand and corporate marketing including the former Executive Director of the Canadian Consumer business group.

In 2010, relocated to 3M global headquarters as the 3M International Marketing Director. In 2014, as Chief Branding Officer, Penny led a reinvention of the 3M corporate brand that moved 3M away from a 25-year-old brand concept, positioning and tagline to a strategy more relevant to the market, and then launched it around the globe simultaneously – “3M Science. Applied to Life™.”

In 2020, she was promoted to President, 3M Canada and reimagined the Managing Director role at a subsidiary to have much more active corporate leadership in the country and community. As businesses tried to respond to pandemic disruptions, she and 3M Canada worked with government partners and delivered an N95 mask manufacturing facility in Brockville, Ontario to fulfill demand and build domestic inventories. It shone a light on the important role 3M Canada played in ensuring the safety of Canadians during a challenging time and brought a strong sense of pride to its employees.

Penny is Chair of the Board of Directors for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

She was recognized as one of the WXN’s Top 100 Powerful Women in Canada in 2022.

Penny is a graduate of Glendon College and the Schulich School of Business – both at York University.

Winny Shen is an Associate Professor of Organization Studies at the Schulich School of Business. She conducts high-impact research and is devoted to teaching in an effort to promote inclusive, productive, and healthy work organizations. Specifically, her program of research, currently supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), centers on three themes: (1) organizational leadership, (2) diversity and inclusion in the workplace, with an emphasis on gender-related issues, and (3) worker well-being, particularly work-family issues and the consequences of workplace understaffing. This work has appeared in leading academic outlets, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management, and the Leadership Quarterly. She was named a Rising Star in 2016 by the Association for Psychological Science (APS).

Lindsay Hillcoat is the Executive Director of Student Services & International Relations at the Schulich School of Business. She is a Schulich MBA ’10, and has spent the past eleven years in a variety of admissions and international relations leadership roles within Schulich. Prior to joining Schulich, Lindsay’s early career was spent working with social entrepreneurs and in the non-profit sector here in Toronto and internationally in West Africa and South Asia.