Chaviva Hosek

Chaviva Hosek is the president and CEO of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR), an organization that has been called “a university without walls.”

The Institute links and funds a network of top Canadian scientists to conduct research and helps to build intellectual bridges with other experts. The organization is the only one of its kind in the world. Before she arrived at CIAR, Hosek crafted three Liberal Red Books and was a key policy advisor to Jean Chrétien as his director of policy and research.

Her long-term career in the public service and as an academic includes a term as minister of housing for the Province of Ontario and a 13-year career as professor of English literature at the University of Toronto.

A longtime champion of Canadian education and human rights, Hosek has served as president and executive member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. She was born in the Bohemian town of Chomutov in Czechoslovakia (now part of the Czech Republic) and raised in Montreal.