CNIB is pleased to announce that Angela Bonfanti, a 13-year veteran of the CNIB team, today became the organization’s first female president and CEO. After holding several leadership positions at CNIB – including, most recently, the position of Chief Operating Officer – Angela succeeds John M. Rafferty, who has been CNIB’s president since 2009.
“It’s an understatement to say that I’m excited and honoured to be taking on this role,” says Angela. “After 13 years with CNIB, I know what we’re capable of as a team, and it’s absolutely limitless. I’m thrilled to discover what we’ll accomplish together in the years to come for our community of people impacted by blindness from coast to coast to coast.”
As the daughter of a person who is blind, Angela has been a lifelong champion of the rights of Canadians living with blindness or low vision. And with more than a decade of experience with CNIB, she not only understands the nuanced challenges facing people who are blind, Deafblind, or who have low vision, but she has been instrumental in tackling those challenges – from implementing innovative community programs to driving crucial changes to legislation affecting Canadians who are blind to leading the urgently-needed development of CNIB’s virtual services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“She is a skilled, passionate, experienced, and forward-thinking leader who has proven, time and again, that she puts the needs and goals of our community first, always,” says Robert Fenton, Chair of CNIB’s Board of Directors, which led the search for the organization’s next CEO. “Although we reviewed a wide range of strong candidates for this role, including both external and internal candidates from across Canada and internationally, Angela is the one who fully encapsulated the qualities we need in CNIB’s next president.”
In taking on the presidency of CNIB, Angela also proudly becomes the first female president and CEO of our affiliate organization, CNIB Deafblind Community Services (DBCS).
To learn more about Angela, visit cnib.ca/ceo.