(En français)

Katherine (Katie) Dudtschak is a deeply experienced and respected business leader at RBC. In her role as EVP, Regional Banking, she leads more than 20,000 advisors in branches and business centres, as well as expert advisors. Inside and outside of RBC, she is a passionate advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Under her leadership, Regional Banking made measurable gains on the inclusion and advancement of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ individuals over the past five years.

How She Made Change

Prioritizing Learning and Development

Katie proactively champions initiatives—from ground-breaking learning to culture change to senior-leadership development—that foster greater inclusion and belonging among the thousands of employees she leads across Canada.

Under Katie’s leadership, RBC’s Regional Banking group achieved significant progress on diversity and inclusion from 2016 to 2021, increasing the percentage of women executives, women in senior management roles, BIPOC executives and employees, and LGBTQ+ employees. Her own senior leadership team includes 50% women.

Katie has sponsored leadership development targeted to the most senior leadership ranks within her team. These sessions have focused on creating more awareness of evolving leadership styles, leading with empathy, managing in a hybrid world, managing divergent opinions, and gender-based leadership.

In 2016, Katie introduced the Learning Map, an interactive learning session for all her employees across the country, to paint a picture of RBC’s Personal & Commercial Banking future. The sessions were so successful that they were updated and repeated in 2018 and 2020.

Sharing Experiences

In 2019, Katie demonstrated unparalleled courage in coming out with her personal journey and gender affirmation experience. Sharing an open letter and video to over 80,000 RBC employees, she chronicled the struggles that led to the realization of her true self.

Since then, she began sharing her story more publicly after receiving feedback on the difference she could make in the lives of others, and how talking openly about her own experiences can lead to more acceptance in workplaces and society.

In 2020, Katie began dedicating a portion of her senior leader meetings to hosting “Inclusion Dialogues,” creating a platform for profiling the voices and experiences of marginalized groups. Her aim in hosting these conversations is to 1) show the “dimensions of human uniqueness,” as she calls it, that we each carry and 2) help role model how leaders can hold their own Inclusion Dialogues within their respective teams.

Each call includes Katie hosting a conversation with a leader on a particular theme or experience. This has included sessions on Indigenous experience, Black experience, gay experience, experiences of different abilities, and more.

These sessions help to raise awareness of different experiences and provide learnings for RBC leaders to help them create more inclusion and belonging within their own teams. Other leaders have followed Katie’s lead and hosted their own Inclusion Dialogues for their teams.

Katie is a true role model, driving an inclusive and caring culture within Personal & Commercial Banking.

Actions You Can Take

• Create space for important dialogues to learn about different experiences. Storytelling is powerful.
• Commit to setting bold objectives, taking action to address persistent barriers, and holding yourself accountable for tracking progress.

About Katherine (Katie) Dudtschak

Katherine (Katie) Dudtschak leads RBC’s eight personal and business regions in Canada. This includes more than 20,000 advisors in branches and business centres, and industry-leading specialist teams such as Commercial Banking, Financial Planning, Investment and Retirement Planners, and Mortgage Specialists. More than 10,000 of these advisors are also licensed through Royal Mutual Funds Inc. Katie is responsible for setting and leading the execution of distribution strategies that enable RBC’s “digitally-enabled relationship bank” strategy and deliver outstanding client loyalty and growth. From 2013 to 2019, Katie also had overall leadership responsibility for RBC’s presence in the Caribbean, following her successful repositioning of the region’s personal and corporate banking businesses. She has more than 30 years of RBC experience and has held a variety of executive roles across the P&CB network and head office including in Strategy, Human Resources, Distribution Strategy, Operations, and Group Risk Management. She also served as Regional President. Committed to community leadership, Katie is a member of the United Way Greater Toronto’s Board of Trustees as well as their Campaign Cabinet. She was a past member of their Major Giving Cabinet, as well as past co-chair of RBC’s United Way employee giving campaign.

Katie is an Industry Director with the Mutual Fund Dealers Association Board of Directors. In 2021, she also became a member of the Board of Directors for Jack.org, a Canadian charity dedicated to youth mental health. Katie holds an MBA from Ivey Business School, Western University and a Partners, Directors and Senior Officers certificate as well as an Institute-Certified Director (ICD.D) certificate from the Institute of Corporate Directors.