Hall of Fame
Cécile Girard-Hicks
by Helen Hatton
Cécile Girard-Hicks is the career woman that we all wanted to be when we grew up. Successful, gorgeous, chic (ah, that French DNA), organized, dedicated, driven and creative. It's no wonder that she won the Canadian Leadership Award.
Cécile has been helping to build Kraft for nearly four decades. She started her career there as a bilingual home economist and since then, has turned the Kraft Kitchens and Consumer Response Centre into Canada’s strongest source of food solutions.
Her accomplishments have been instrumental in helping Kraft Canada become the undisputed leader of the Canadian food and beverage industry. She has always been a true professional, working tirelessly to put Kraft in a leadership role. She motivated her organization to become key consumer advocates by providing innovation, ideas and solutions to Kraft teams and to consumers directly.
She and her organization have always maintained an incredible focus on consumers, keeping them at the centre of everything they do. Her team also fuelled an innovative spirit in the company and most notably created the recent “Family Food Simple” food solution strategy.
Cécile personifies passion. She’s passionate about her work, food, consumers and her team. She also demonstrates speed, and has been quick to recognize an opportunity and mobilize her organization around it. You can feel the camaraderie and commitment of Cécile’s teams whenever you work with the Kitchens. She is a true team builder.
A high point in her remarkable career was being present at the beginning of the consumer movement and realizing that Kraft needed to talk directly to customers. She and colleagues spent more than two years, visiting two cities in every province, as well as Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories. They gathered information from community leaders on everything from regional tastes to packaging, and got a complete and unique perspective on all of Canada. As a result, the Consumer Response Centre was established and became a huge success. It's a model for the industry with the Kitchens as the underpinnings of the whole vision.
She says, “I am very proud of having increased the number of Kraft Kitchens staff while sustaining a high level of excellence and quality. A great part of our success stems from understanding the dynamics of what we have to offer from the kitchen and has given us a much broader perspective with food. Our Canadian Kitchens became a model successfully applied in Germany. Then Australia came here to study our system. International exchanges and networking like this are fashionable today, and we did it first.”
She advises: “Take joy from day to day with what is achievable, and understand that then, and only then, can you accomplish change. Otherwise conflicts occur and credibility and usefulness are lacking.”
Who better to ask about the future of Home Economics? Cécile had a lot to say, and I paraphrase… “Historically, professional home economists were generalists covering family relationships, food, child development, etc. I see a real opportunity to focus more narrowly and become experts with a more precise frame of reference. We need higher level degrees, more PhDs and more specific disciplines within the profession. For example: Don’t be just a dietitian; be a dietitian specializing in heart disease. If we do that, no one else can touch us, for well educated, well trained, specialized home economists will then have the right set of solutions for the time.”
Cécile's long time co-worker and friend, Marilynn Small, stated, “Cécile has always been an interesting, creative force that you don't find very often. She is a huge idea person. She can be quite brilliant with her ideas, and can also drive you crazy as her mind is always leaping ahead and changing directions as more ideas come to her! But brilliant people are like that! Many of us have had a lot of fun and laughter working and sharing the whole food experience together.”
Cécile, we love you, admire you, and thank you for your lifetime career of making the rest of us look so good! Welcome to the Hall of Fame!