Tim Brodhead

Tim Brodhead was president and chief executive officer of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation from 1995 to 2011. From 2013 to 2014, he served as interim president and chief executive officer of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation.

Prior to joining McConnell, Mr. Brodhead spent 25 years working in international development, mainly in West Africa, South Sudan, India, and Bangladesh. He was the founding executive director of ACORD, based in London, U.K., and in 1975, he co-founded the Canadian development agency Inter Pares. In 1989, his study of Canadian non-governmental development agencies, Bridges of Hope? was published by the North-South Institute. From 1988 to 1992, Mr. Brodhead was president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC), representing some 110 Canadian NGOs.

Tim Brodhead has served on many boards, including those of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and Concordia University, and he has chaired Philanthropic Foundations Canada. Currently, he co-chairs Canadians for a New Partnership and is a board member of The Natural Step, Engineers Without Borders (EWB-Canada), the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC), the Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon, and the Jarislowsky, Omega, Inspirit and Ottawa Community Foundations. He is a member of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) and is on the advisory boards of the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, the BASIX-Liu Institute for Global Studies (UBC), and the Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts Network (Dalhousie University).

In 2001, Mr. Brodhead was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. He holds honorary degrees from McGill, Carleton, and Dalhousie Universities and the University of New Brunswick. He lives and farms south of Ottawa. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation appointed him a Trudeau mentor in 2017.