Ana Paula Lopes

Ana Paula Lopes was born in Lisbon in July 1959. She moved to Canada with her parents when she was ten years old and settled in Toronto. Her parents were involved in the community’s organizational life, her father being one of the founders of the Sporting Club Portugal’s branch in Toronto.

After graduating from the University of Toronto with an undergraduate degree, Lopes started working as a social worker serving the Portuguese community. In 1980, she became a civil servant in the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture and Metro Toronto’s Department of Planning. Ten years later, Lopes became one of the founders of Abrigo, a social service organization focused on counselling Portuguese-speaking women and children in crisis situations. That same year, she also became a legislative assistant for the Ontario Minister of Culture Rosario Marchese. Two years later, she moved to the NDP Premier Bob Rae’s office as his executive assistant.

After Rae’s electoral defeat in 1995, Lopes left the world of electoral politics and launched the communications consultant company Saralex Communications. She also became a corporate director with the business and technology strategy consulting firm Tapscott Group, founded and owned by her husband, Don Tapscott.

Feeling unfulfilled working in the private sector, Lopes returned to the non-profit sector. She became director or chair of multiple significant organizations, including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra – where she was the first female president –, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre Foundation, Women’s College, Trent University, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation (CAMH), Writers’ Trust of Canada, and World Wide Web Foundation. She led major corporate transformations in some of these organizations and helped create, through her philanthropy and fundraising, the Tapscott Chair in Schizophrenia Studies at the University of Toronto and the Shirley A. Brown Chair in Women’s Mental Health Research at CAMH.

A dual citizen of Portugal and Canada, Lopes has received multiple distinctions from both national governments, including the Order of Canada in 2011 and the Order of Merit by the Portuguese government in 2014. The Women’s Executive Network included Ana Paula Lopes in her 2016 list of Canada’s top 100 most powerful women. Lopes is also a member of the Portuguese Diaspora Council since 2014.