Ottawa When Linda Hasenfratz became CEO of the Canadian auto supplier Linamar almost 20 years ago, there were very few women in this position. At that time she succeeded her father Frank Hasenfratz. However, she does not want the family relationship to be understood as a decisive criterion for her career: “Ancestry does not qualify you for anything,” Hasenfratz once said in an interview. It is also not important what gender or how old you are.
She encourages women to get into the automotive industry and advises them, “Don’t look for the negative. Concentrate on what you are good at. “
Hasenfratz, now 55 and one of Canada’s most successful entrepreneurs, did just that. She is convinced: “It is not only right, but also important for entrepreneurial success that companies promote diversity and inclusion.”
In 2001, Linamar employed 8,600 people in 30 production sites. Today, according to the Guelph-based company, there are 27,000 employees worldwide, including around 10,000 in Canada, and 61 manufacturing facilities. In 2019, sales were the equivalent of five billion euros.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
Linamar has also been active in Germany since 2013. At that time, the Canadian took over Salzgitter Antriebstechnik in Crimmitschau, Saxony, and Seissenschmidt in Plettenberg, North Rhine-Westphalia in 2015. Linamar now operates a total of eight production sites in Germany.
The distinguished entrepreneur was a member of the Canadian delegation when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Washington in 2017 for his first meeting with the newly established US President Donald Trump. The agenda included a roundtable discussion on increasing women’s participation in business life and the creation of a Canadian-American council to make recommendations on how to achieve this goal.
The council, led by Co-Chairs Linda Hasenfratz and Julie Sweet, CEO of North America Accenture, has now presented its report, completing its mission. “We did our job,” says Linda Hasenfratz in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
The proposals range from a family-friendly policy to better access to capital for women company founders, closing the “gender gap” in the STEM subjects, to the suggestion that the highest management level should have a greater participation of women in company management as a “global competitive advantage for USA and Canada ”.
Canada’s family businesses are at the forefront of the trend towards greater gender parity
According to the OECD, the proportion of women entrepreneurs in Canada is 15 percent. This puts Canada in third place behind Chile and the USA. The Canadian daily “Globe and Mail” complained in the spring that women only hold 13 percent of executive board positions in the country’s largest companies – and only four percent have female CEOs, but that doesn’t stop Linda Hasenfratz from establishing: “The proportion is not bad, it is actually good compared to other countries. “
Not only the top management levels should be considered, but also the management levels below. And things already look much better there. There, the proportion of women is 45 percent, in some companies even over 50 percent. Hasenfratz also believes that family businesses are more open to diversity than other companies.
This assessment is supported by a study by the National Bank of Canada (NBC), one of Canada’s major banks. NBC noted in their “Family Advantage Report” from October 2020 a global trend according to which companies are moving towards “gender parity”. “In Canada, family-owned companies are at the forefront of this trend,” notes the NBC. At the C level and in middle and lower management, the proportion of women is 35 percent. According to the bank, this trend will continue.
Family businesses are an important factor in Canada’s economy: They make up 63 percent of companies, employ 6.9 million people and contribute € 390 billion to Canada’s gross domestic product. The success of family businesses is also based on the fact that their management thinks long-term and “wants to create values not in quarters, but in decades,” writes the NBC.
Hasenfratz joined the family business as a machinist
Hasenfratz, mother of four children aged 20 to 24, has been running Linamar since 2002. Her father Frank left his home country Hungary in 1957 after the Soviet Union put down the revolution, emigrated to Canada and started in Ariss, a rural community in 1964 at Guelph, Ontario, a one-man company. “From a lathe in the basement of my father’s house to a global multibillion dollar company,” says Linda Hasenfratz, describing the rise of the family business.
In 1966 her father founded “Linamar”, which is composed of the first letters of the first names of his daughters Linda and Nancy and his wife Margaret. From humble beginnings it has become a major supplier to the Ontario automotive industry. In 1986 Linamar went public in Toronto. Today the family holds around 33 percent of the shares.
At first, daughter Linda had few ambitions to join her father’s company. She did a Bachelor of Science at the University of Western Ontario in London, of which she is now Chancellor, and then worked in sales for a pharmaceutical company. “I think I had to prove to myself that I didn’t need my father to get a job,” she says.
Series: Women Entrepreneurs Worldwide
Israel is one of the countries with the highest number of female founders in the OECD comparison. Eynat Guez is the most successful entrepreneur in the Israeli start-up scene.
>> Read the article here
A year later, however, she joined Linamar – as a machine operator on a lathe. She familiarized herself with warehousing, bookkeeping and cost calculation before taking over the management of the first Linamar production facility. In 1997 she graduated with a Masters of Business Administration from Western University and became Chief Operating Officer before taking over the position of CEO from her father.
Networks strengthen the role of women in companies
The “National Post” then headed a report about Linda Hasenfratz with “The other carmaker’s daughter”. At that time there was still Belinda Stronach in Canada, who rose to Magna, the larger competitor. Both women are about the same age, both have a father named Frank, and both fathers came to Canada as immigrants. But there is a big difference: Linda learned the business from scratch at Linamar. Dennis DesRosiers, one of Canada’s leading analysts in the automotive industry, was initially skeptical when Hasenfratz took over the post. He later said, “You can see she’s doing a phenomenal job.”
The fact that Canada has a relatively large number of women entrepreneurs and managers in management positions is also due to the many networks, says Hasenfratz. One of these networks is the Catalyst Canada Advisory Board, of which she is also a member. Catalyst is calling for the proportion of women in executive and executive positions to be increased to at least 30 percent by 2022. The CEOs, but also entire companies, would have to personally advocate ethnic diversity and inclusion.
For this purpose, a “Diversity Council” was created at Linamar, which is part of the Chief Operating Officer. “A man,” emphasizes Linda Hasenfratz. “Because men and women have to be involved – and not just women.”
More: Constanza Levicán: “Why I am no longer confused with an intern today.”