Career
After Reisman’s first marriage ended in divorce, she switched careers and followed her family into business first joining her brother Howard’s company in an executive capacity. In 1979, she moved to Toronto and co-founded Paradigm Consulting, a strategic change consultancy, serving as its managing director for seventeen years. In 1992, she served as president of Cott Beverages, a private label bottler of soft drinks, and also experimented with marketing fresh, ready-to-cook foods through a firm called Now! Foods.
In 1995, she was invited to become a “frontline investor” for Borders, the American book retailer, which was planning to enter the Canadian market. When Borders was unable to obtain the necessary federal regulatory approval in Canada, Reisman entered big box book retailing on her own founding a company called Indigo Books and Music. She was backed by the Onex Corporation, one of Canada’s largest and most successful conglomerates, and also controlled by her husband Gerry Schwartz, whom she had married some thirteen years earlier in 1982. In 2001, Indigo Books and Music merged with its main rival Chapters to form the largest book retailer in Canada obtaining a near monopoly position.
Reisman has also served as a governor of the Toronto Stock Exchange and of McGill University.
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