CAROLINE XAVIER

Caroline Xavier, head of Canada’s electronic spy agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), has been a public servant for over three decades.

As chief of one of Canada’s foreign intelligence agencies, Xavier is tasked with “protecting Canada’s government and critical infrastructure from cyber threats.” A responsibility that has only become more critical since 2020, when the CSE warned that foreign-backed disinformation and online influence campaigns became the “new normal.”

Before being appointed chief of the CSE in August 2022, Xavier made history as the associate deputy minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.

“I’m the child of Haitian immigrants and the first Black person — male or female — to reach the deputy minister rank in the federal public service,” Xavier said in a 2020 interview with the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management. “It’s an achievement I’m extremely proud of. Yet this milestone also raises the question: What took us so long?”

Canada’s chief cyber spy is also responsible for another first. On parental leave in 1995, she co-founded The Bagel Run, Inc., the first Montreal-style bagel shop in Orleans, Ont., which is still baking bagels in a wood-burning oven.

Born in Montreal, Xavier’s parents “instilled in her the value of education,” according to Black Ottawa Scene.

“One thing that has driven me over the years and throughout my career is the mantra, ‘If you can see it, you can be it,’” she said in a CSE statement on X. “In my case, I was lucky to see a lot of successful Black women in my family and community and had many incredible people that influenced and supported me.”