Bruce Heyman and the value of showing up

Before Bruce Heyman arrived in Ottawa, there were moving boxes, a family prayer book and a request for travel tips. In March 2014, the Chicago banker was preparing to become the United States ambassador to Canada. He and his wife, Vicki, released a video asking Canadians what they should see. An appointment to represent a country had begun with an invitation to its neighbors: tell us about yours.

At his swearing-in, Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath. Heyman used a prayer book inherited from his grandfather, an immigrant from Lithuania. The official photographs belonged to the machinery of government. The book belonged to a family. Both traveled into the same moment, a reminder that an ambassador arrives with more than a briefing folder.

Heyman had spent 33 years at Goldman Sachs. He knew the weight of an introduction and the work that follows it. Ottawa offered a different test: how to maintain a friendship between countries when their governments disagreed. Years later, running a Canadian investment firm, he would return to a related question. What can a relationship make possible once people decide to put something behind it?

A proposition at business school

Bruce and Vicki met at Vanderbilt University. Each earned a bachelor’s degree in 1979 and an MBA in 1980. Their shared history gives the later diplomatic partnership a pleasingly practical beginning. Before the official dinners, there was coursework. Before the bilateral relationship, there was a study arrangement.

In their telling, a class called new venture creation provided an early rehearsal for working together. Vicki proposed combining his academic strengths with her creativity. Bruce recognized a useful proposition, though he also joked about the implied verdict on his own creativity. The romance emerged from the collaboration. Business school occasionally delivers a return that cannot be entered in a spreadsheet.

They built their life in Chicago and raised three children. Their connection to Vanderbilt continued through alumni service, fundraising and a need-based scholarship. Two of their children also attended the university. The campus remained a place to which the family gave time and money, rather than a credential left behind after graduation.

At Goldman, Heyman became a partner and managing director in Chicago. His private wealth management responsibilities extended across the Midwest and into Canada. That geography matters. The country to which he would later be posted was already part of his professional map. His eventual move into diplomacy brought a familiar neighbor into much sharper focus.

The neighbor becomes the assignment

The Heymans supported Barack Obama before the presidential appointment changed their address. They worked together on his campaign, carrying a partnership developed at home into political life. When the opportunity to serve arose, Canada was their choice. They had visited, Bruce had worked with Canadian clients, and Vicki had family connections across the border.

Obama’s nomination also belonged to a familiar American practice: sending political supporters into diplomatic posts. Heyman was a financier and fundraiser entering public service, rather than a career foreign service officer. That background is part of the story. The job would test what he could do with his access, experience and willingness to learn.

On April 8, 2014, Heyman presented his credentials at Rideau Hall. Governor General David Johnston welcomed him with a reminder that trust must be renewed day by day. The welcome included a small joke about arriving after a long Canadian winter. A new ambassador had reached the official starting line, with both a constitutional ceremony and a weather conversation.

The assignment ran through January 18, 2017. Between those dates came meetings, travel, public appearances and the daily management of a relationship that touched trade, energy, security and culture. The closeness of the countries did not make the job simple. Familiarity can create its own diplomatic hazard: assuming the other party needs less explanation because it lives nearby.

When the conversation freezes

The Keystone XL pipeline dispute tested that closeness. Stephen Harper’s government wanted approval for a project intended to carry Canadian oil through the United States. Obama’s administration opposed it. Heyman represented Washington in Ottawa, placing him directly between a Canadian priority and an American decision.

He later described the strain in the book he wrote with Vicki. The episode complicates the cheerful image of diplomatic receptions. An ambassador cannot promise away the policy of the government he represents. A friendly manner does not supply permission to build a pipeline. The disagreement had to be lived with, and the larger relationship still had to function.

In a 2019 radio conversation, Heyman discussed the tension between immediate economic needs and longer environmental goals. His answer treated the neighbor’s interests as something to understand, even when the policy disagreement remained. That is a demanding position to hold: acknowledge why the other side cares without pretending that acknowledgment settles the dispute.

“I think how you treat your friends is more important than maybe one transaction,” he said.

The thought travels easily beyond foreign policy. A transaction has an endpoint. Neighbors keep living next to one another after the signatures, rejections or announcements. For Heyman, the relationship needed enough substance to survive a disappointing decision. Its value could not depend on getting an agreeable answer every time.

Two routes into the same room

Vicki’s work as a cultural envoy gave the partnership a second route into Canadian life. Bruce worked through the formal diplomatic structure. She used art and culture to build connections outside it. He later wrote that their book alternated chapters between them, reflecting the two perspectives they had brought to the assignment.

The distinction helps explain why their public appearances often feel like a conversation already underway. Each has a role; neither needs to disappear for the other to perform it. At the ambassador’s residence, Lornado, they discussed their lives with interviewer Catherine Clark. The story of the posting included the couple who inhabited it, alongside the office Bruce held.

Their 2019 book, The Art of Diplomacy: Strengthening the Canada-U.S. Relationship in Times of Uncertainty, turned those years into a shared account. Its argument put sustained attention to the neighbor at the center. The publication came after their time in Ottawa, giving them another means of continuing a conversation the appointment had started.

When they returned to Goldman Sachs for a public discussion, Heyman described the importance of noticing what matters to someone else. His diplomatic experience had made small gestures look less small. The lesson was about perspective: the person receiving an action gets a vote in what that action means. A host’s modest courtesy can be a guest’s lasting memory.

Chicago, with Canada still in view

Leaving the embassy did not end Heyman’s Canadian work. He co-founded Uncharted, a venture concerned with convening and connecting Americans and Canadians. Its activities brought together philanthropy, storytelling and political engagement. The title of ambassador became a past office; the cross-border interest continued as an active project.

His subsequent affiliations included the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center, Canada 2020 and the Council of the Great Lakes Region. These institutions offer different ways of keeping the relationship in view: policy discussion, public debate and attention to a region shared by both countries. Chicago is a useful home for someone whose interests keep reaching across the Great Lakes.

He also joined the board of Chicago Public Media. His work after government thus retained a civic dimension as well as a Canadian one. The recurring pattern is participation in institutions where conversation can become organized activity. An advisory board or a media board is less photogenic than a state ceremony, but it gives an ongoing interest somewhere to work.

In 2022, Heyman became a senior adviser to Olivier Desmarais and the team at Power Sustainable. The connection led to a new executive assignment two years later. On October 2, 2024, the Montreal-based alternative asset manager announced him as CEO. Desmarais, who had started the firm in 2019, remained chairman.

The relationship gets a capital allocation

The appointment brought Heyman’s financial and diplomatic experience into the same job. Power Sustainable wanted to expand, particularly in the United States. He was asked to help scale its reach, support capital deployment and develop its standing in sustainable investing. The familiar border now ran through a business mandate.

The work has several investment routes. In May 2025, the firm launched a decarbonization private equity strategy with more than US$330 million in commitments. Led by Karine Khatcherian and Martin Aares, it targeted established middle-market businesses serving sectors such as energy, industrials, transportation and buildings. For Heyman, the leadership task included bringing capital partners alongside specialist investment teams.

A February 2026 announcement added another milestone. Power Sustainable Infrastructure Credit’s first global fund had closed in December 2025. Capital aligned with the strategy exceeded US$1 billion, including more than US$800 million in commitments across the fund and separately managed accounts. Its financing activity included community solar, fiber connections, data centers and aerial firefighting.

These categories give the sustainability language physical form. Electricity needs equipment and financing. Connectivity needs networks. Services need businesses able to operate them. Heyman’s current role sits above several teams pursuing those opportunities through equity and credit. His contribution must be judged alongside their execution, rather than treating a CEO appointment as the work of an entire firm.

A five-year promise to the neighbor

On September 10, 2026, Power Sustainable announced a plan to invest and mobilize more than $10 billion into Canadian projects and companies over five years. The announcement described opportunities its teams were developing and evaluating across infrastructure, credit, clean energy and industrial businesses, and agri-food. Canada had become the explicit focus of the firm’s next stated ambition.

That number describes a plan, including capital to be mobilized with partners. It is different from a report of completed investment. Keeping the distinction clear makes the ambition easier to assess: future projects, financing and partnerships will give it substance. The announcement identifies the direction; the following years will show how much of it becomes operating assets and businesses.

For Heyman, the continuity is easy to see. In 2014, he asked Canadians what he should discover. In 2026, he is helping lead a firm proposing to commit more capital to their country. Between the two sit a disputed pipeline, a jointly written book, civic work and an enduring professional relationship with the neighbor.

The earlier prayer book and moving boxes make a useful closing image. A career change can look grand from the outside and remain deeply personal from within. Heyman’s has involved a university partnership, a Chicago household, an Ottawa posting and a return to finance. The work ahead is less ceremonial: finding projects, bringing partners together and making an announced intention hold up in practice.