International Women’s Day: Alumna Doris Bonora, QC, inspires as role model, mentor

As a senior lawyer at an international firm, an award-winning university instructor and an active community volunteer, Doris Bonora, QC, ’86 LLB, has built a career with wide-reaching impact. 

In her role as a partner at Dentons, where she is the group leader of the Trust, Estates and Wealth Preservation practice, Bonora navigates clients through the legalities of a death in the family. 

“It is very rewarding to help families plan and work through their estates,” Bonora said. “You are winding up someone’s life, and there may be litigation that ensues, there may be a business, leases, divorces — all manner of areas of law to deal with.”

This variety of work keeps her “fresh and excited,” Bonora said, and she relishes tackling the challenges that arise and finding the best possible outcomes for each situation. 

“I enjoy solving problems, either in the estate planning where we find legal solutions to the goals someone wants to achieve or trying to be creative in finding solutions to litigation,” she said. 

Three years ago, Bonora took on an additional role when she was appointed to the Alberta Human Rights Commission — a quasi judicial tribunal that hears and determines cases on human rights abuses. “The role of a human rights commissioner really makes me feel like I am doing something in advancing women and others who are disadvantaged in society,” she said. 

For the past four years, Bonora has also been a sessional instructor at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law, where she has brought about significant changes to the wills and estates course. 

Wanting to change the traditional structure of the course she inherited in her first year of teaching, Bonora and her colleague Erin Lafuente, ’01 LLB, completely revamped the material. The end result enables students to experience the life of a wills and estates lawyer, including making presentations and drafting estate planning documents. The feedback from students was so positive that Bonora and Lafuente received the 2020 Pringle/Royal Teaching Excellence Award for their innovations in the classroom and their commitment to student learning. 

Along with her law practice and teaching commitments, Bonora volunteers with a variety of community organizations. One of her passions is helping the families of people with mental illness or dementia. “I feel a sense of duty to be able to give back because, as lawyers, we are truly blessed,” she said. “There are many people in society who are challenged, but if I can help in a small way, that is so rewarding for me.”

She is also passionate about mentoring women in law. “I want women to succeed and I feel so lucky when I can play a small role in someone’s journey to success,” she said.

Bonora’s own journey to success has come up against obstacles along the way. “I naively thought, when I started in practice, that there was no discrimination,” she said. “I was wrong.”

Early in her career, Bonora struggled to get time off for maternity leaves — ending up with three months off for her first leave and nine weeks off for her second. It was a situation that she says left her feeling unhappy and unhealthy. 

“I fought to change things and they did get better,” she said. “[But] we need to keep making strides for women, especially for diverse women. And we need to be vigilant about keeping options open. We need to make sure women can work part-time or in alternate working arrangements, only limited by their imagination, to foster women — however they define success.”

For those who aspire to leadership positions in law firms, Bonora believes more effort needs to be put into preparing women for senior roles, through both mentorship and continuing education opportunities in management and leadership. 

“I have built a team of seven lawyers and six paralegals who are all women, and I’m very proud of that,” she said. “But leading the team has been challenging because I have had to learn to be a manager on the job."

In recognition of her impact over the course of her career, in 2021 Bonora was honoured with a Women in Law Leadership (WILL) award for Leadership in the Profession (Private Practice) — an accolade that was very meaningful for her. 

“It is easy to put your head down each day and work hard, and it is so amazing to feel that someone is actually noticing the work,” she said.