She/Her
Laura Brownell provides advice and support on pension and benefits matters for the Society of United Professionals, an Ontario-based trade union representing over 8,000 professional employees. She has been employed by the Society since 2008. She has experience with all types of pension plans including defined benefit, defined contribution, jointly sponsored, and multi-employer pension plans. Her responsibilities include negotiating pension contributions and plan design elements, handling plan administration issues, and protecting the interests of pension plan members during plan mergers.
Laura served as a member of the Employee Sponsor Committee of the University Pension Plan and participated in the development of its definitive documents, including the pension plan text and the Funding Policy. She currently serves on the University Pension Plan’s Board of Trustees and sits on the board of the Multi-Employer Benefit Plan Council of Canada. Laura is an active member of the Ontario Federation of Labour Pension Committee and the Canadian Labour Congress Pension Advisory Ad Hoc Committee. She was Co-Chair in 2019 and 2020 for the annual Toronto Lancaster House Pensions Conference. She is a past member of the Multi-Employer Pension Plan Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) and currently sits on FSRA’s Public Sector TAC.
Laura holds a Master of Industrial Relations degree from the University of Toronto and the Osgoode Certificate in Pension Law.
