Meet the new Advisory Board members

David Cheesewright is the President and CEO of Walmart EMEA, responsible for the company’s operations and business development in Europe, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa (EMEA), as well as Canada. He joined Asda, Walmart’s UK operation, in 1999 and held senior leadership positions there and at Walmart Canada. Previously, David had held leadership positions in the UK at Mars Confectionery, the world’s leading confectionery company. He holds a first-class honours joint degree in Sports Science and Mathematics from Loughborough University in England. He and his wife Clare are the proud parents of Jack, a Queen’s Commerce student entering his second year.

The Honourable Justice Gloria Epstein, BCom’72, is a Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. After graduating from Queen’s, she owned and operated a fishing camp in Northern Ontario before studying law at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1977. She practised with two large Toronto law firms before starting her own firm, Gloria Epstein and Associates, in 1985. A Queen’s Counsel, she was appointed to the Superior Court of Justice (Ontario) in 1993 and to the Court of Appeal for Ontario in 2007. While a trial judge, she was appointed by the Premier of Ontario to review the government’s involvement in the lives of the Dionne quintuplets. She was awarded the Arbor Award for volunteer service to the University of Toronto in 2007, and was recognized as a YWCA Woman of Distinction in 2013. She and her husband Seymour Epstein have five children and five grandchildren.

Valerie Mann, BCom’86, is the Managing Partner of Lawson Lundell LLP, one of western Canada’s largest business law firms with three offices, in B.C., Alberta and the north. She carries on a transactional (mergers and acquisitions/corporate finance) as well as an advisory practice. Valerie has been involved in transactions for private and public companies in the resource, manufacturing, technology, consumer packaged goods and service industries, including acting for private equity and venture capital funds. Prior to obtaining her law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1991, Valerie worked in marketing with a large consumer packaged goods company. Valerie was named by the Women’s Executive Network as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 in 2011. She is married to John Condon, BSc(Eng)’85.