Former CHRO appointed to Order of Ontario

Former RBC chief human resources officer and long-time diversity leader Zabeen Hirji has been appointed to the Order of Ontario for 2025, joining the ranks of the province’s highest civilian honourees.

The Honourable Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and Chancellor of the Order of Ontario, named Hirji among 30 new appointees recognised for outstanding achievement and service.

“The 2025 Order of Ontario appointees represent the very best of our province,” Dumont said. “Through their exceptional dedication and achievements, they have made profound contributions that have touched lives across Ontario and beyond. May their remarkable examples continue to inspire us all to work together for the greater good.”

The Order of Ontario is the province’s highest civilian honour, awarded to an Ontarian “who has shown the highest level of excellence and achievement in their field, and whose impact has left a legacy in our province, in our country and around the world,” according to the Ontario government. Members are described as “a collective of Ontario’s finest citizens, whose contributions have shaped — and continue to shape — the province’s history and place in Canada.”

Four-decade HR career

Hirji spent 40 years with RBC, beginning as a teller and moving through a series of business roles before becoming the bank’s global chief human resources officer, a position she held for a decade. Over that period, she helped shift HR at RBC from a back-office function to a business partner and change leader embedded in management committees and strategy discussions.

She is widely credited with driving RBC’s focus on human capital management and leading major leadership and diversity initiatives. Her work on the bank’s “Collective Ambition” framework aligned purpose, strategy, culture and brand, supported by a global “Employee Jam” that invited unfiltered employee input on RBC’s purpose, vision, values and desired behaviours.

Her leadership has already been recognised with the Ivey Business School Award for Lifetime Achievement in the HR Industry and the Meritorious Service Medal for diversity and inclusion work. 

Since retiring from RBC, Hirji has continued to influence HR thinking as an executive adviser on the future of work and leadership across the private and public sectors, maintaining a strong focus on talent strategy, employee experience and inclusive workplaces.

Zabeen Hirji is a trailblazing human resources and social impact leader, rising from immigrant roots to Chief Human Resources Officer at Royal Bank of Canada to become the first South Asian woman in the C-suite of a TSX 100 company. She led putting values and purpose at the core of corporate strategy, and equity and inclusion, making significant gains in visible-minority and women executives. Today, as founder of Purposeful Third Act, she inspires people to make “retirement” a time of social purpose. An active philanthropist and mentor, she advises governments, not-for-profits and universities on future of work and leadership.

Older workers, GenAI and the DEI business case

Hirji has emerged as a prominent voice on the role of older workers at a time of skills shortages, demographic change and the rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). “We know that we have skill shortages and, in the case of Canada, we have a reduction in immigrating international students, which also formed part of the workforce,” she told HRD Canada, arguing it has become “even more critical” to consider older workers as part of employers’ staffing solutions.

She has warned against age-based stereotypes, urging employers to rethink their assumptions about workers aged 55 to 64. “It’s really about thinking of the mindset on age as something of value instead of something that’s declining,” she said, noting that many in this cohort are digitally savvy and were further upskilled during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With GenAI reshaping job content, Hirji has stressed that demand is rising for “human skills” such as problem-solving, judgement, collaboration, creativity, communication and analytical thinking. “As the machines do the things that machines can do … a lot of those skills are even more important now,” she said, adding that GenAI still requires users to ask good questions, apply sound judgement and communicate clearly.

She has argued that older workers are often well positioned to work effectively with GenAI because of their experience in written communication and critical thinking. “The thing about GenAI… it’s very intuitive. It’s about asking good questions, prompting, using good judgment and written communication. Older people are better at it, because that’s the only way we communicated before. And we had to be really thoughtful about our words,” she said.

Hirji is also known for reframing diversity and inclusion from a compliance obligation to a business imperative. At RBC, she helped build a holistic strategy that linked talent, client and community objectives, backed by leadership accountabilities, goals and reporting. She has called inclusion “the gateway to innovation” and framed diversity and inclusion as a core element of human capital strategy, focused on getting the best talent and “helping people be their best selves, all the time.”

Her message to leaders has been summed up in a line that has resonated across the HR community: “Diversity is a fact, Inclusion is a choice.” Her appointment to the Order of Ontario places that philosophy — and the strategic HR work behind it — among the contributions formally recognised as shaping the future of the province.

2025 appointees to Order of Ontario

The 2025 appointees to the Order of Ontario are:

• Ahmad Attia
• Cameron Bailey
• Arron Barberian
• Major-General (Retd) Jean-Robert Bernier, OMM, CD
• John B.W. Carmichael
• Jamaica Cass
• Don Cherry
• Donette Chin-Loy Chang
• Robert James Cusimano
• Philip J. Devereaux
• Morris Freedman
• Jacques Frémont
• Kathleen Gartke
• Amanda Grzyb
• Zabeen Hirji, MSM
• Shirley Horn
• Bernard Lawless
• Nathan Leipciger, CM
• David MacNaughton
• Joe Mancinelli
• Claudette McGowan, CM
• Tracy Moore
• Edward Rogers
• Richard Rooney
• John L. Semple
• Nancy Mei Chun Siew
• Stephen J. R. Smith
• The Honourable George Strathy
• J. David Wake, KC
• Mary Wells