Facing financial challenges early last year, St. Margaret’s — a K-12 independent all-girls boarding school in Victoria — hired a new head of school, elected a new board of governors, secured a mortgage against the school’s land and put in place a plan to grow enrolment.
Today, the non-denominational school is launching its “100 Women, 100 Million” campaign, seeking 100 women to commit $1 million each to expand a scholarship program for students affected by war, political unrest or socio-economic barriers. The launch is taking place during festivities for the 100th anniversary of the alumni Old Girls Society.
“It’s a call to women leaders to break down barriers and invest in the next generation,” said head of school Sara Blair.
The money will be invested in perpetuity to support 100 scholars each year, based on a similar Harvard University model, said Blair, who is confident the school can raise the $100 million by September 2026.
“We’d like to double the size of the school [over the coming years] and we’d like to remove the financial barriers for students.”
The campaign has received a boost in the form of an initial donation of $10 million from Wall Street pioneer Maggie Gilliam, 86, who graduated from St. Margaret’s in 1955.
In addition to the announcement of the donation — the largest in the school’s 117-year history — there will be a ribbon cutting to officially name Maggie’s Hall and Maggie’s Café at the school, which will have 320 students in September.
Gilliam, who now lives in New York, was born in Ottawa and moved around Canada, including living on her family’s sheep farm in Metchosin. After St. Margaret’s, she attended McGill University.
She intended on going to medical school, but has said her pediatrician uncle didn’t believe women should be doctors.
In an interview with the Times Colonist at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel this week, she said she pivoted and took a course in what was called “money and banking,” soon realizing “this is kind of interesting.”
Gilliam graduated from the Harvard-Radcliffe program in business administration and from an internship, started her Wall Street career with a more than two-decade stint at Goldman Sachs.
In a profession dominated by men, Gilliam has said she had to “raise my voice if I wanted to move ahead at the same speed as my male colleagues.”
She had a role model in her grandmother Cairine Reay Mackay Wilson, who was appointed Canada’s first female senator in February 1930 — just four months after the judgment confirming women as “qualified persons” — and served until her death in 1962.
In 1955, Wilson was the first female deputy speaker of the Canadian Senate.
Interested in retail, Gilliam sharpened her skills as a global retail analyst and became an adviser to Fortune 500 companies including Home Depot, Nordstrom, Walmart and Costco. She remains president of Gilliam & Co., a consulting business she founded in 1997.
Gilliam, who continues to support all-girls education, said she’s disappointed that women seem to still have to do “so much more” than men to get ahead in their professions and still often take on a disproportionate amount of work in the family.
She has given millions over the years to support education, research and health-care institutions.
Gilliam, who advised Walmart for 50 years, told the in 2018 that her philanthropy was inspired in part by founder Sam Walton and his wife, Helen, and their support for social and environmental causes. Helen, she recalled, had a favourite saying: “It is not what you gather in life, but what you scatter in life that reflects the kind of life you have led.”
Among students from Nepal, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza who have benefited from St. Margaret’s Global Girls Scholarship Program are sisters Torpikai and Zarmina Sultani, who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban recaptured Kabul in 2021 and banned education for girls. The two are now in Grade 11 at St. Margaret’s, after starting at the school last year.
Zarmina, who left behind her mother and other siblings, said she has learned a lot in almost two years.
“I’ve had the opportunity to build my skills throughout the clubs, the activities that I do and I have had the opportunity to build my leadership skills,” said the teenager, who is interested in pursuing engineering at university.
Zarmina said through the school’s robotics lab she both built and operated a robot. She volunteers through the University of Victoria with the Victoria Hand Project, which designs and develops low-cost 3D-printed prosthetic devices for amputees.
“Back home, I didn’t even know what robotics looked like,” she said.
Almost 1.5 million girls and women remain out of school in Afghanistan, the only country in the world where girls are barred from education beyond elementary school, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
“It is really disheartening to see the situation is getting worse and worse every day, because I really connect to my family and friends there and it really is really hard for me to hear them be very disappointed, it’s very heartbreaking,” said Zarmina. “Imagine when someone just tells you not to live your life.
“I have these opportunities, and I’m so grateful for these, but then I think of the girls back home that if they had more opportunities, they would have done as well as I am doing right now.”
Fellow student Noor Abuhmaid, from Gaza, is in Grade 10 at St. Margaret’s School after starting her studies at the school in September.
Noor said while the death toll in her home is “horrific,” she feels like she’s showing peaceful resistance to fighting and war by making the most of the education she has been given in Canada.
“I’m so grateful to be here,” said Noor, who said she is interested in psychology and computer science.
“What I can do here is use this opportunity to get an education and fight with my education.”
• To learn more about the 100 Women, 100 Million campaign visit
