Poonam Puri is one of Canada’s most respected scholars and commentators on issues of corporate law, securities law, corporate governance, and corporate and white-collar crime. 

Appointed to York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1997 at the age of 25, and a recipient of its Teaching Excellence Award in 1999, Puri is a prolific scholar who has co-authored or edited three books and written numerous articles or reports.  She has an LL.B. degree from the University of Toronto, where she was the Silver Medalist in her 1995 graduating law class, and she holds a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from Harvard Law School.

Her work is academically rigorous as well as firmly grounded in the real-time of policy-making.  It is for this reason that governments and regulators in Canada and internationally, including Industry Canada, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), the Canadian Senate, the Wise Persons Committee on Securities Regulation and the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank, have sought her expertise. 

In 2008, she was appointed as one of two research directors of the Canadian Ministry of Finance’s Expert Panel on Securities Regulation, which is seeking input on the best way to develop and implement a model Common Securities Act for Canada.  In 2005, she was co-research director of the Task Force to Modernize Securities Legislation and also served as a member of the OSC’s Investor Advisory Committee from 2005 to 2007.  She was the President of the Canadian Law and Economics Association from 2006-2008.

A 2005 recipient of Canada’s Top 40 under 40™ award, she was appointed in 2008 to the board of directors of the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.  She is on the board of directors of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, and an inaugural member of the University of Toronto President’s International Advisory Council.

Areas of interest: Corporate/Commercial Law