Banker-Turned-Journalist Deborah Yedlin:

Deborah Yedlin, MBA’91, is a study in contradictions.

As an English-Economics double-major in the 1980s, she alternated readings of Pride and Prejudice with demand theory text books. Two years after graduating, as an analyst at New York’s Goldman, Sachs & Co. she clocked 12-hour days before spending the evening at the symphony and then hitting the spreadsheets again until 3:00 a.m. She tackled both marketing and finance during her MBA at Queen’s. And, 11 years ago, in what may be the epitome of an extreme career makeover, she gave up a successful career as an investment banker to become a journalist.

“I wanted to be a sports writer from the time I was in high school,” says Deborah from her home office in Calgary. She opted instead for English and Economics at Edmonton’s University of Alberta, where her mother was a professor. “I opted to study something practical and something I loved,” she says.

No matter that they were at seemingly opposite ends of the academic spectrum.

Combining the unexpected remains Deborah’s modus operandi today. “Give me the numbers and I’ll tell the story,” she says.

As One Of Canada's Most Widely Recognized Business Reporters, Deborah Has written For The Financial Post, The Globe And Mail And The Calgary Herald.

As one of Canada’s most widely recognized business reporters, Deborah has written for the Financial Post, The Globe and Mail and The Calgary Herald – a paper she recently re-joined as its business columnist. Since 1996, she’s also been a frequent contributor to CBC Radio and TV, commenting on such hot-button issues as the Bre-X mining scandal, the changes to royalty and income trusts, and the skyrocketing price of oil. During last year’s Alberta Royalty Review, she took a hard-line stand against the government’s controversial decision to charge energy companies 20% more for the right to develop the province’s oil and gas resources.

“I’m not a shrinking violet. I take the chance to write about the government and to point out what it’s not doing for the electorate. In this case, I really felt we were making a mistake, that the government had no clue about the consequences.”

The response, Deborah says, was incredible. “I heard some readers and listeners say, ‘I get it now.’” To others, her words added fuel to an already flaming fire. “I was the whipping boy on CBC Radio for about two months,” she laughs.

Still, Deborah was in her element.

It wasn’t always so. After spending the two years following her MBA working for investment banks Richards Greenshields and Burns Fry Limited, she had a classic ‘I’ve had it!’ moment. “I was working on a major merger deal and training to run the 1993 Calgary Marathon,” Deborah remembers. “I came to work one Sunday at noon after a long run and everyone said, ‘Where have you been?’”

“I realized then that so much about this business was what you do, not who you are. I had so much else (besides work) I wanted to do with my life.”

In addition to raising three sons, ages 13, 11 and 9, being an avid cyclist and active within the Calgary community, Deborah – along with her husband Martin Molyneaux – is a generous supporter of Queen’s TriColour Venture Fund. This innovative fund is used as a teaching tool to give QSB students the opportunity to make investment decisions involving real venture companies. “We absolutely have to teach business students about taking risks so they can go out and contribute to Canada’s economy in an unconventional way,” she says.

“I’m not a risk-taker,” Deborah insists. She’s confident that her investment banking days are a thing of the past. But she might still have a bit of the high finance yin and yang left in her.

“If I ever get tired of being a journalist,” she says, “I just might do a PhD in Economics.”