The Top 25 Most Influential 2020 winner
Toronto
Outgoing President, Canadian Bar Association
Vivene Salmon is the first person of colour and the second in-house counsel to lead the Canadian Bar Association in its more than 120 years of existence. In this role, Salmon has devoted attention to bridging the gap among all generations of lawyers, such as through her Conversations with the President podcast series, which discusses technology, innovation and the different ways of practising law. She has also been instrumental in modernizing how the CBA communicates with its members, such as by using social media and vlogs. Amid the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 crisis, she helped in launching a national task force that would deal with the pandemic’s impacts on the justice sector. She also chaired the organizing committee for the CBA’s first conference dedicated to racialized lawyers. She is vice president, country compliance manager, global banking and markets compliance at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in Toronto, where she develops policies and procedures to comply with regulatory requirements.