People of EDC - Darby Vacher

Welcome to People of EDC, a series dedicated to celebrating the diverse experiences of our workforce by getting to know them on a more personal level. This week’s article features Darby Vacher EDC’s Senior Associate for Community Investment.

As Canada’s Export Credit Agency, EDC’s mandate is to support and develop Canada’s export trade and Canadian capacity to engage in that trade and to respond to international business opportunities. Our corporate values are elements that help us bring this mandate to life and EDC employees are encouraged to embed these values in everything that they do, one of these values being caring.

The value of caring means we care for people, for their wellbeing and growth, beyond business. EDC helps its employees live out this value by partnering with organizations within the community with a focus on three key areas: giving, empowerment and education.

To help spearhead these initiatives is Darby Vacher, EDC’s Community Investment Lead. Darby’s EDC journey began in August 2020, during a global pandemic and following many years working an administrative role at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. Darby?? started as a Coordinator, serving as an administrator for the broader Marketing team. Through this role, she also had the opportunity to participate in EDC’s 2023 brand campaign, which gave Darby direct exposure to some of EDC’s customers and helped her learn so much more about the business.

A short time afterwards, a Community Investment Senior Associate role became available on the Corporate Communications team, and it was the perfect opportunity for Darby to leverage her education, past work experience and passion. “I have a degree in Communication Studies and having worked in healthcare, I have a desire in me to give back to people who need it. This role allows me and the whole organization to do just that!” says Darby.

The Community Investment team is small but mighty, leading many of EDC’s initiatives including donation programs, Community Investment Day, the annual Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign, corporate partnerships with Care Canada and other charity organizations, and EDC’s scholarship program that helps students cover their post-secondary tuition fees. Earlier this month, EDC held its largest ever annual Community Investment Day, which saw 1600 employees volunteer at 40 charitable organizations spread out across the Ottawa region.

“Not only is it inspiring to see the impact of EDC’s generosity as a corporation, but also seeing the number of employees who genuinely want to go above and beyond their regular duties to help us execute on this portion of our strategy. It’s remarkable!” says Darby.

As she begins to prepare for her maternity leave (she’ll be welcoming a baby boy in August!), Darby is excited about the future of Community Investment and hopes to continue finding ways of embedding the strategy in other areas of EDC. ?“I really want to further connect Community Investment to everything we do at EDC, including the business side” says Darby. “I hope that we can work with more internal teams and external organizations to further drive our impact for our community, our partners, our customers and for Canada in general”.

We thank Darby for all her contributions over the past year and we look forward to welcoming her back next year. We wish her all the best during her maternity leave!

Visit Communities at EDC to learn more about EDC’s community investment approach.