Biography: Robert E. Waite, Managing Director, Waite + Co.

Robert Waite is one of North America’s foremost experts in the field of executive communications and stakeholder relations. Mr. Waite is Managing Director of Waite + Co., a firm specializing in Board and CEO-level communications strategy and advice.  With offices in Toronto and Ottawa, Waite + Co. draws on its founder’s 30+ years of experience working with six corporate CEO’s; two distinguished United States Senators; and as a member of the Executive Branch of the United States. He has led and transformed communications, government relations, marketing and investor relations functions at companies as diverse as IBM, Ford, CAE, CIBC and Canada Post Corporation.

Earlier in his career Mr. Waite served as Press Secretary to Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts and Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. When working for Senator Dole he wrote the speech nominating George H.W. Bush for vice-president of the United States, delivered at the Republican National Convention in Detroit. He also served on the staff of the 1980 Republican Platform Committee.

Mr. Waite served as Vice President, Public Affairs at the Export-Import Bank of the United States during the Reagan Administration. Prior to entering government, Mr. Waite was an award-winning journalist and columnist. He was national political correspondent for Pacific New Service (PNS), covering the 1976 Democratic and Republican presidential primaries and the general election. He subsequently served as PNS’ East European correspondent, based in Warsaw, Poland, where he covered the rising influence of trade unions and the Catholic church as counterweights to communist regimes.

Mr. Waite continues to write and publish on topics of business leadership, politics and also delivers speeches and lectures to academic and general audiences. He is currently researching a book on critical success factors for new-to-the-position CEOs.

Mr. Waite is currently Chair of the Canadian Stamp Advisory Committee; a member of the Program Committee of the Canadian Journalism Foundation; serves on the Board of the Killay-Meany Foundation; is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society; a PR Seminar Seminarian; and a member of the Union Club of Boston.  

He is past Chair of the Ottawa Liaison Committee of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce; the CIBC YouthVision Scholarship Committee; two United Way of Greater Toronto campaign cabinets (1993 and 2002); a past Trustee of Hebron Academy; a past Board member of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business; past member of the Senate Press Secretaries Association; and served as Employer Representative at the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland (1982).     

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Waite received his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he majored in European social history. He holds certificates in Corporate Social Responsibility (University of Toronto, 2009); Theory and Practice of Investor Relations (University of Michigan, 1995); and Marketing High Tech Products (Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, 1989). He is also a 1982 graduate of IBM’s Advanced Management School at the Thomas Watson Center in Armonk, New York.

Mr. Waite moved to Canada in 1986 on assignment with Ford Motor Company and is a dual Canadian – U.S. citizen. He and his family live in Rockcliffe, Ontario.