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SPECIAL REPORT 36 www.canadianlawyermag.com TOP 25 MOST INFLUENTIAL Human Rights, Advocacy and Criminal SHARA ROY Partner, Lenczner Slaght Royce Smith Griffin LLP, Toronto Shara Roy is a litigator, specializing in commercial disputes, securities, professional liability, restructuring and insolvency and class actions. She is also a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in the profession. Roy organized the April 2018 panel discussion "Women in Commercial Litigation: Bringing Men into the Conversation" for The Advocates' Society. She also established (and heads) the diversity and inclusion subcommittee of the Commercial List Users' Committee to promote inclusion before the court for advocates, judges and court staff. As of press time, the subcommittee was scheduled to release its first report and set of recommendations. Roy is co-leading an initiative to increase referrals to women in private practice, with a curated referral bank that will be available through an organic network of female lawyers and allies. Roy helped launch ReferToHer, a list of experienced female lawyers, which is meant to increase referrals to women in the legal profession. In-house HILDA WONG Senior vice president and general counsel, First National Financial LP, Toronto Hilda Wong has co-chaired and is an active member of the Women General Counsel Canada national conference, serves as a board member of the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic and has presented at the Federation of Asian Canadian Lawyers' annual conference. Wong is a trailblazer. As senior vice president and general counsel for First National, she oversees all aspects of the company's legal affairs, including the formation of legal policy, compliance and regulatory matters, governance, contract negotiation and documentation and is responsible for First National's privacy and anti-money-laundering programs. Wong joined First National in 2007 as senior legal counsel and was appointed general counsel in January 2013 and vice president in April 2014. Prior to joining First National, Wong was a partner with a national law firm. Wong has extensive experience in all aspects of financing, syndicated lending and real estate. She holds an LLB from the University of Toronto and has been in practice since 1993. Human Rights, Advocacy and Criminal SUNIL GURMUKH Counsel, Ontario Human Rights Commission, Toronto Over the past year and a half, Sunil Gurmukh has shown passion and leadership in the fight to eliminate systemic discrimination of marginalized groups. Gurmukh was lead counsel for the OHRC in its inquiry into racial profiling and racial discrimination of Black people by the Toronto Police. He was the lead author of "A Collective Impact," the OHRC's interim report on the inquiry that was released in December 2018. The interim report revealed that a Black person was nearly 20 times more likely than a white person to be involved in a fatal shooting by the TPS. He was also lead counsel for the OHRC in Charter case Talos v. Grand Erie District School Board. The OHRC successfully challenged a provision of Ontario's Human Rights Code that allowed employers to cut or reduce benefits to workers aged 65 and over. He is counsel for the OHRC in Al-Turki v. Ontario (Ministry of Transportation), a case currently before the HRTO that will affect thousands of refugees and their ability to obtain driver's licences. His chapter in Irwin Law's book Racial Profiling and Human Rights in Canada was published in October 2018.