Canada’s first celebrity economist has a gift for demystifying the secrets of the dismal science

Sherry Cooper became the first woman to be named chief economist of a big bank in Canada, at BMO in the 1980s. Now she’s chief economist for Dominion Lending Centres, Canada’s largest mortgage originator. Here she is in her own words:

My mom was a typical 1950s housewife, but my grandmother—she and my grandfather owned a grocery store. They were always working. And I always thought my grandmother had a more interesting life than my mother.

I didn’t know what economics was when I went to university in Baltimore. I fell in love with it. No two days are the same. And everyone cares about it, even if they don’t know it.

The Federal Reserve in the late 1970s was fabulous—right at the leading edge of what was going on. Inflation was rip-roaring. We’d had two oil crises that were far, far worse than what we’re seeing today—gasoline wasn’t even available. We had the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, the year I worked for Paul Volcker, the Fed chair. He remained a mentor for years after.

I knew nothing about the Canadian economy when I moved to Toronto. Rates were sky-high, and I’d been at the Fed, and what the Fed did was very important for Canada.

My office at Burns Fry was a glass box on the trading floor. I loved the excitement of day-to-day movements, economic numbers coming out, 15 interviews a day with reporters.

I love to explain things to people in ways they can understand. I think that’s my secret, that I could demystify secrets.

Bay Street then was everything you could imagine and worse. Awareness of what was appropriate behaviour was non-existent.

When BMO bought Burns Fry in 1994, it was a culture shock for a lot of people. The bank was much more staid and bureaucratic. When I left to work at Dominion, it was like being back at Burns Fry—a bunch of young people eating what they killed, no more bureaucracy.

My biggest mistake was on dollarization. In the early 1990s, there was talk that we should tie the currency to the U.S. dollar. I was in favour of it, but it wouldn’t have made sense—we have our own independent monetary policy.

Had I fallen flat on my face, I would’ve gotten a tremendous amount of attention. It’s a little more subtle now, but it’s still that way for women.

No one can do it all. But you can set priorities and live by them. I very much wanted to be a good mom but also to have a very successful career.

I’m consumed by AI. It’s a huge, fundamental breakthrough that is going to have an unbelievable impact on all of us. That’s much more important than today’s inflation report.

We have AI expertise in Canada, but we don’t seem to know how to commercialize it. We don’t have the angel and venture funding. Our capital markets aren’t as deep and liquid as in the U.S. And Canadian banks don’t typically lend to startups.

I’ve tried hard to get AI to help create PowerPoint decks, but it takes more time than it’s worth.

You need to be CEO of your own personal services corp—to market yourself and provide services or goods people want.

I don’t believe one should live to work, but you do have to work to live, so why not do something you really are passionate about?

More Sherry, please: the rise of Canada’s first celebrity economist

1972 Graduates first in her class from Goucher College in Baltimore with a B.A. in economics, followed by an MA and PhD from the University of Pittsburgh

1977-1982 Works as an economist at the Fed in D.C., spending a year as an assistant to then-chair Paul Volcker

1980 Her son, Stefan, is born

1983 She leaves Fannie Mae for Toronto to work as a senior financial economist at Burns Fry

1985 Promoted to chief economist at Burns Fry and a year later becomes the first woman director at a major Bay Street brokerage

2006 Becomes chief economist at Bank of Montreal

2012 Retires as BMO’s chief economist at age 62

2015 Joins Dominion Lending as chief economist