Profile – Jeff Davis, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan

Jeff Davis joined the legal team at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in 2004. Fifteen years on, he speaks about what it’s like to lead the legal and corporate affairs department at one of the world’s largest pension funds and why he’s determined to challenge the stereotypical image of general counsel.

Ruth Green

When Jeff Davis joined Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan in 2004, he was one of just a handful of lawyers acting for the pension fund. All that has changed in the past 15 years as the company expanded rapidly into emerging markets. Today, as the fund’s Chief Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer, he oversees an 80-strong department, including 20 lawyers, which advises more than 100 portfolio companies with investments in 50 countries worldwide.

Based in New York, Davis also spends a considerable amount of time in the fund’s offices in Hong Kong, London and Toronto. His mandate is impressively broad, not just overseeing bread-and-butter pension and employment law issues, but also the lobbying, marketing and corporate communications, compliance and brand-building functions. This has required his team to become ‘more integrated’ in the advice it offers as the demands of stakeholders of the C$190bn fund continue to increase.

‘From when I started, I think the world’s changed’, says Davis. ‘People are looking more and more behind a company to its owner and to its shareholders to have accountability and responsibility for how the company is being operated and treated’.

This has had a direct impact on the types of day-to-day investment-related risks on which he and his team are regularly called upon to provide advice. ‘The role has gotten more complicated in that you’re not just thinking about the company and the teachers and how we’re generating funds for them’, he says. ‘We have to think about a much broader group of stakeholders and, because we’re a communications and marketing department, we’ve also got a responsibility to protect the reputation of the organisation. The advice can be anything from we’re doing a new deal to a bomb goes off at Brussels Airport and we’re the largest shareholder and have people on the board there that we want to try to help.’

Like all pension funds, Ontario Teachers’ is under growing pressure from its own shareholders to prove that issues like climate change, which once seemed peripheral to the business, are being taken seriously. ‘There’s a huge component that the shareholders are educators, they’re teachers and they’re in the business of trying to teach children to build a better future,’ says Davis. ‘That doesn’t mean we necessarily do what the teachers tell us, but we want to be aware of the implications for them and how we conduct ourselves. When you’re talking about ESG [environmental, social and corporate governance] issues, climate change or any of those sorts of issues, I think ultimately we look at them as a form of a risk and a real one at that. The company might end up becoming less valuable as a result of a huge climate-related disruption.’

A separate department focuses specifically on ESG matters, but Davis and his team are often asked to advise on world events if they pose a potential investment risk for the business. ‘If you’re talking about, for example, a crisis like a terrorism attack, that is squarely within my responsibility from the marketing, communications, legal and government relations side of things’, he says. ‘And sometimes the crises are borne out of ESG-related issues and I will be asked to give advice or my opinion on these kinds of issues’.

Leading in style

While Davis’ capacity to keep on top of such a wide array of topics is impressive in itself, his leadership style is, arguably, what makes him stand out. It has been heavily influenced by his personal life. Although today he is happily married with two stepdaughters, earlier in his career he wasn’t in such a good place from a mental health point of view. After two failed marriages, Davis hit rock bottom, but by opening up about his weaknesses in the workplace he says he’s become a better leader.

This was all too clear in June 2019 when he was awarded the prestigious accolade of Canadian General Counsel of the Year at the 2019 ZSA Canadian General Counsel Awards. When he took to the podium to deliver his acceptance speech he was determined to use it as a platform to shatter long-held misconceptions about general counsel. ‘I went through a dark period some years ago where I wasn’t so happy’, he says. ‘Talking about what I went through was a way of being vulnerable in that audience and showing that talking about something like that is not weak. It actually shows courage. I was also trying to give permission for others to do the same. In a way, I was also trying to tie an image of success to an image of imperfection.’

Davis was overwhelmed by the reaction from colleagues, clients and external counsel, both in the room and in the days and weeks following his speech. Growing up in Toronto and attending an all-male private school, he says he can see why people were particularly surprised to hear a man talk so publicly about personal challenges. ‘I think sometimes there can be even more pressure on men to hide vulnerability’, he says. ‘The notions of heroism and courage relate to stoicism, but if you look into what stoicism is, it’s actually about vulnerability, we just don’t equate it with that. Maybe we men have had that ingrained more [in us] that it equates to weakness and the idea that you’ve got to just suck it up and be invincible. I’m not saying that women aren’t put in the same position sometimes – they certainly are – but a number of people have said to me [since the speech] that it was so important for a man like me to say what I said.’

Davis admits that this type of open conversation about vulnerability wouldn’t even have been contemplated 15 years in the workplace when he joined the fund. That’s all the more reason why he’s tried to instil this idea into his team and highlight that showing weakness can be positive. ‘When you stop trying to show that you’re perfect, your team stops trying to be perfect and then they’re more open about the challenges that they’re having’, he says. ‘It’s safe. You have a safe environment. I think people feel it’s very real and authentic when you are that way and you also trust people who are that way. It’s the way that I get to show up at work and fortunately I work in an organisation that is very accepting of who I am.’

He says he takes pride in the fact that this had led to a healthy working environment, where people in his team at all levels are comfortable challenging each other regardless of hierarchy. ‘We know the science behind that: more diversity of thought leads to better ideas’, he says. ‘This creates an environment that allows it and has ensured that my team are more open to challenging me’.

Davis relies on a large number of law firms to provide legal advice across the world. Having been a private practitioner himself earlier in his career, he’s keen to ensure that his external counsel function like a wider extension of his team and can avail themselves of the same type of open and honest environment that he has worked so hard to foster in-house. ‘We’re in a competitive investment environment and we have a very fiercely competitive environment for talent’, he says. ‘When we talk about talent, we talk about internal and external talent. We invest in 50 countries across the world and so we need to get legal advice across those markets. Law firms are part of who we think of nurturing and developing those bonds of trust with because we’re in their hands and we’re vulnerable to them too.’

Challenging stereotypes

Although Davis says he may not be the ‘magazine image’ of what you would expect a general counsel to be, he thinks that stereotype is starting to wane. ‘I really do think that’s changing and I think that general counsels are way ahead on this stuff’, he says. ‘I think they’re doing a great job of pushing this movement forward and I’m trying to do it [too]. I do want to be part of a movement that destroys the myth that vulnerability equates to weakness. I do care very much about that theory and dispelling that myth. I want to be part of that.’

Davis says it’s also vital that general counsel, just like other members of the ‘C-suite’, lead by example. ‘If I’m trying to promote an environment where we can embrace our imperfections, then leaders need to be the first to step up and start to do that. I think that they need to be the ones who start to acknowledge how they’re imperfect and not in a way that is artificial, but in a way that is authentic and real. This is why I said what I said in the speech. If I got up there and simply said “Oh sometimes I make mistakes”, that’s not really real. Leaders should be willing to do similar things. Maybe they don’t need to do it up in front of a whole room like I did, but they need to be the first ones to speak up, because if they don’t no one will’.

More generally, he believes the role of general counsel everywhere has become increasingly integral to the business. ‘I see the role as having a very strong connection to the CEO and sitting on executive teams’, he says. ‘It’s a lot of responsibility and no longer just “Tell me that is supported by the law”. It’s: “Tell me that this is the right thing to do”. It’s: “Tell me this is OK with our reputation”. It’s: “Tell me everything you can tell me about it”. I think that’s where the role has gone to’.

Five years on since taking the helm of the legal and corporate affairs department, Davis says the challenges have grown exponentially, but he’s still loving every minute: ‘We have a lot of change going on in the markets. I think just the pace itself has changed and is increasing so much and what keeps me up at night is being able to stay on top of all of that and try to see ahead around the corners to what’s coming. But when I say it keeps me up, I like to try to experiment with ideas and what may actually be the best ways to address these issues. I enjoy that type of thinking – that’s just strategy. Building and envisioning strategies for five years or ten years out is the stuff that I really love to do in my role.’