Canadian Lawyer InHouse

was the only woman working in her area of the brewery. "The cool thing was how she's really risen above that challenge of being the only (woman) and become a bit of a leader within the group. Her dream is to one day be one of the first female brewery managers," she says. "I know what it's like to be the only woman in a room." Brown points out, however, that Brown followed one employee who being a woman in the beer-making industry hasn't been a deterrent 60-SECOND SNAPSHOT THE LAWYER: Kelly Brown too recognizable for the job. "One of the great things about Dave is he's totally visible in the breweries — he's tall and has silver hair and a distinc- tive voice, concluded it probably wouldn't be pos- sible to disguise him enough." Since the show was running on " says Brown. "The producers the W Network, someone from the management team thought it would be interesting to feature a woman on the show, and Brown's name came up. "At first I didn't want to do it," she says. "I was nervous about being on TV — are you going to embarrass yourself and your company and your family? And I was thinking about it from a legal perspective. What if someone slipped and fell during the filming? What if we had a new product launching and they saw the product being produced in the background? I thought of all the things a lawyer would think of . . . all of the things that can go wrong. vince her that the show was really about celebrating the unsung heroes in a com- pany like Molson. The show involved following five employees — two in the Vancouver brewery, But the producers managed to con- " Creemore brewery north of Toronto, and one in Moncton, N.B. — under the guise of making a documentary about beer making. So Brown put on "a ton" of makeup, slicked back her hair into a ponytail, two in the 36 • JUNE/JULY 2012 THE COMPANY: Molson Coors Canada • Brown received her law degree from Dalhousie University, clerked for the Federal Court of Appeal, and was called to the bar of the Law Society of Upper Canada • She joined Molson in 2000 as cor- porate counsel and was named chief legal officer in 2009 • Brown is a member of the Canadian Bar Association, Canadian Corporate Counsel Association, and the Association of Corporate Counsel and donned a pair of glasses. "I was going to work in a brewery with bright red lipstick," she laughed. To her sur- prise, she did run into people she had met previously — and they didn't rec- ognize her. A new mother at travelled across the country working production lines and overnight shifts — testing the hops, checking to see if safety corners were being cut, and con- necting with other women in what is still predominantly a male-dominated industry. Not only did she learn about brewing beer, she learned a few things management could do to make their working lives better. the time, she INHOUSE moving up in the management ranks. In 2009 she was called into the presi- dent's office — at the time she was five months' pregnant and coming up on maternity leave — and was asked if she' to After six months of maternity leave, she returned to the company as part of the management team. As a result of her experience on d like to become the new CLO. Undercover Boss Canada, Brown is now mentoring the female employee she followed on the show and has enrolled her in a leadership program (Brown mentors several people, both formal- ly through leadership programs and informally because she says she's inter- ested in doing so). "One of my philosophies is, show your people you care about them because then they'll care about you and respect you and want to follow your vision," she says. The legal profession itself is one of the few where mentor- ship is actually built into the process through articling. a suburb of Montreal, Brown was the third of four children. She didn't grow up thinking she was going to become a lawyer — instead, she studied English literature at McGill University during the early '90s, right around the time of the recession."Everyone who graduated was working at McDonald's," she says, so on a lark she decided to write the LSAT and see if she could get into a law school Growing up in Beaconsfield, Que., " ended up doing well — well enough to get accepted into a few different schools — and decided she wanted to experience what it was like to live in a different part of the country. She chose Dalhousie University in the following September. She PHOTO: CORUS ENTERTAINMENT

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