By Neil Armstrong
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| Photo contributed Al Ramsay, National Manager of LGBTA Business Development, TD Bank. |
A determination to excel and to give everything his ‘150 per
cent’ are the attributes that have led a Jamaican Canadian banker into the path
of success and accolades for his innovation.
Al Ramsay, national manager of LGBTA business development at
TD Bank – the only position of its kind in North America – is the recipient of
the 2018 Ted Rogers School of Management (TRSM) Trailblazer Achievement Award
at Ryerson University in Toronto.
This prestigious award recognizes the important
contributions of a TRSM alumnus or alumna who has achieved outstanding success
in their professional field and who has, through their leadership and
achievements, broken barriers for equity-seeking groups and blazed a pathway
for future professionals.
In a congratulatory letter to Ramsay, Avner Levin, interim
dean, said a committee reviewed the profiles of many outstanding nominees and
agreed, “your contributions represent the true spirit of this award and its
importance to our school.”
“Your leadership and commitment in creating a culture of inclusion
and diversity at TD Bank from customers, to employees and community exemplifies
the values our institution strives to encourage in our students and our
alumni.”
Ramsay, 42, a graduate of the university, was presented with
the award on May 17.
He says the award means a lot to him as an immigrant coming
to Canada to join his mother who left him and his older brother and sister with
family in Georges Plain, Westmoreland. He was 12 when she left and they
reunited when he was 18 years old.
The reason she left was to forge a better life for the
family, and knowing this, Ramsay, who went to Manning’s High School, says he
came here with the intention of bettering himself and his family.
He considers his parents his heroes and became the first
from his family to go to university, believing that education is the key to
success.
“To me, I think I’m living the dream of my ancestors, in a
way. This is coming to fruition,” says Ramsay who believes in “giving back.”
He noted that when he finished university all of his friends
had a connection to corporate Canada but he did not, so he decided that he had
to break the cycle.
“So when I got into a position where I could help I always
give back,” he says, also making a decision to give back to his alma mater.
Ramsay says he has some really great mentors and sponsors at
TD Bank who also advised him to give back as it is a good way to build his
network.
As a result, he reached out to Ryerson offering his skills
as an alumnus and “they leapt at it.”
Consequently, he was the keynote speaker at the TRSM student
conference held earlier this year and he has followed up with some students who
attended the event.
As a black gay man, Ramsay says he wants to give back to the
black students population and the employees resource group, but also to RyePRIDE
which represents queer and trans voices at the university.
He and his team of regional managers and senior financial
advisors across Canada are responsible for the growth of the bank’s LGBTA
customers’ personal, wealth and business portfolios.
Over the past thirteen years, Ramsay has held increasingly
senior positions supporting TD’s diversity and inclusion mandate spearheading
customer, employee and community portfolios.
He is considered an expert in the LGBT community and is
instrumental in helping the bank to become a leader in this community.
Ramsay was one of the first diversity and inclusion
full-time employees at TD when he was the national diversity manager, community
relations.
He started the first black employees network, the first
PRIDE network at the bank.
He was also the first person in the marketing space to have
a same-sex couple in mainstream advertisement, or help to create the first new
immigrant package.
Ramsay was also the one who reached out to the Irie Music
Festival and to Pride Toronto to let them know that TD wanted to be a sponsor.
The association with the Pride Festival was the first overt
sponsorship by a bank, he notes proudly.
“To be the face of that, driving that, it took some gumption,
obviously, but I had an organization that was behind me.”
He said there were a lot of people who really believed in
him even before he believed in himself.
“Those folks, and I was very lucky, they come in every
stripe and colours, not only the Black community…it was a whole swath of
executives from different backgrounds – straight, gay, black, white, Asian –
they’re all there rallying behind me and cheering me on.”
Ramsay said he actually ‘came out’ before he thought he was
ready to do so. As a junior employee, he was out at work but he wasn’t out to
his parents.
“I wasn’t afraid of telling them. It was more of my own
journey,” he says, noting that he decided to tell his mother just days before a
national newspaper was to publish a story about TD’s leadership with the LGBT
community.
Ramsay said he had to own his journey and come to loving
himself because he grew up in the church – his grandmother was a pastor -- and
there was a lot of shame about being gay.
Ramsay holds a bachelor of business administration from
Sheridan College and a bachelor of commerce from Ryerson University.
As someone in a leadership position, he gets calls from
financial institutions around the world about the work that TD is doing with
the LGBT community.
His team has been doubled this year because “we’ve proven the
concept that it makes sense” where diversity and inclusion are concerned.
He said TD Bank has partnered with organizations across
Canada around issues like anti-bullying, youth homelessness, HIV/AIDS, seniors
care and transgender rights.
Ramsay said the reason he is passionate about diversity and
inclusion is because he almost gave up at a different bank when he was an
intern.
A co-worker, who was from the Caribbean, a Christian and
held a senior position, overheard his conversation.
Ramsay said he was deep ‘in the closet’ and she made his
life a ‘living hell,’ which paralyzed him every morning he went into work.
“I thought I was going to lose my job. I thought that she
was going to out me and my career was going to be over. My family is going to
find out and I went in deep depression,” said Ramsay, noting that someone
introduced him to Scott Mullin, a vice president at TD Bank who is now retired.
Mullin hired him and remains a mentor, and it was actually
on his terrace that Ramsay and his husband, Michael, got married.
Ramsay says he would never want anyone to experience what he
went through at that other financial institution and this is the reason he is
passionate about an inclusive culture.
He says his grandmother was his biggest teacher, she along
with his mother and aunt were very strong females in his life, and his father
was the breadwinner of the family.
Ramsay hasn’t been to Jamaica in a decade but has partnered
with Jamaican Canadian lawyer, Maurice Tomlinson, who is also gay and works for
the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, which does a lot of work in the Caribbean.
Tomlinson started Montego Bay Pride and for the past three
years Ramsay has helped to raise funds so that disadvantaged youth can have
access to transportation and activities during the celebration.
Last year he sent a message to the youth but this year he
has made a commitment to visit his family in Jamaica and to attend Montego Bay
Pride.
[A shorter version of this story was published in the North American Weekly Gleaner, May 17-23, 2018.]
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