Cameron Fowler
He carries a Canadian passport. But Cameron Fowler may as well be a citizen of the world, as comfortable in Dubai, Beijing or Geneva as he is in Toronto or London, Ont., where he was born and raised. For Mr. Fowler, the journey to a career that has taken him to many parts of the globe began when he was an 11th grader on his first trip to Europe.
"My dad was speaking at a conference and I went along with him," recalls Mr. Fowler. "It was the moment in my life when I knew that I wanted to explore this great big world out there."
After earning an honours degree in international politics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., Mr. Fowler travelled to Nepal, where he volunteered for a few months at a leper colony. He came back to Canada and worked in Toronto for four years - he was a policy adviser for two years to Dianne Cunningham, who was then Ontario's minister of intergovernmental affairs.
In 1999, Mr. Fowler became general manager at Delano Technology, a Toronto-based marketing solutions firm later acquired by an American company. Delano soon transferred Mr. Fowler to London, from where he worked to develop markets in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
"I travelled around quite a bit," recalls Mr. Fowler, who has an MBA from the London Business School at the University of London in the United Kingdom. "We worked very hard to develop the business."
In 2003, Mr. Fowler joined Barclays Wealth, the wealth management division of Barclays Bank PLC in London, as director of strategy, private banking. In his five years with Barclays, Mr. Fowler moved quickly up the ladder, becoming chief operating officer and board director and later head of European private banking. He was managing director and head of Barclay's Wealth International when he left London in 2008 to join BMO Financial Group in Toronto.
Mr. Fowler says working in international markets has taught him to adapt quickly to different cultures and behaviour - a handy skill in his current role as a senior executive responsible for BMO's global marketing strategy. Being in Europe during the recent recession has also given him a different view of Canada.
"I left London at a time when there was still a lot of uncertainty about the stability of major banks and the pound, the housing market was really struggling, and people were unsure about the role the U.K. government intended to play in the regulatory response to the situation," he says. "Arriving in Toronto, the conversations were quite different - there was still uncertainty about the economy but there was an underlying confidence that the banks have been regulated and well managed."
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