For Samantha Horn, Law’91, loyalty continues to pay steady dividends after more than two decades. The Women’s Executive Network (WXN) has included her among the recipients of its 2014 “Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Awards.” Named in the KPMG Professionals category, she is recognized for leadership within her organization – the one she has been exclusively with since graduation.

Horn, who started her 24-year career at Stikeman Elliott LLP as a summer student, has been a partner in the firm’s Toronto office since January of 1999, and now co-heads its Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity Group. Her corporate and commercial law practice has also earned her such distinctions as inclusion in the 2014 Lexpert/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada and the 2015 edition of The Best Lawyers in Canada. Among her recent significant mandates were OMERS Private Equity Inc.'s sale of Maxxam Analytics International Corporation to Bureau Veritas for CAD$650 million and York Capital Management Inc.'s US$126-million acquisition of the Canadian assets of Primus Telecommunications Group Incorporated.

Calling the WXN award a “great honour,” Horn advises women interested in pursuing leadership positions to “seek out opportunities and take those that are offered to you.”

In addition to being a trusted advisor to many leading Canadian and cross-border business organizations, she is one of the pillar partners leading Stikeman’s Women’s Initiative Committee and one of its most sought-after mentors by associates at all levels. An American Bar Foundation Fellow, she just completed her term on the ABA Business Law Section Council. Among her other professional, community, and philanthropic pursuits are the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, the Canadian Women in Private Equity (CWPE) Association (a founder and former chair), and KINSA (Kids and Internet Safety Alliance, former board chair).

“Find out what you enjoy and what you are good at and steer your career towards those goals,” she says. “Try to focus more on the things that may distinguish you and that you excel at and less on the obstacles that might be in your path.”

That’s what Horn has done ever since her five years at Queen’s, including two as an undergraduate economics student before she entered law. “So much of university and law school is about teaching a manner of thinking and the way to approach a problem,” she says. “I most certainly would not be where I am today without my education from Queen’s.” 
 
QUEEN’S LAW WXN ‘CLUB’ -- First-time WXN honoree Samantha Horn now joins repeat winners Judy Goldring, Law’91, Executive VP and Chief Operating Officer, AGF Management, and Linda Mantia, Law’92, Executive VP, Cards and Payment Solutions, RBC. Two other alumnae and Dean’s Council members – Betty DelBianco, Law’84, Executive VP and Chief Legal & Administrative Officer at Celestica Inc., and Leslie O’Donoghue, QC, Law’88, Executive VP of Corporate Development & Strategy and Chief Risk Officer of Agrium Inc. – were previously inducted into the Women’s Executive Network Hall of Fame after being named four times.