Leadership and Long-Term Stewardship.
Protecting Eckler’s nearly 100‑year legacy.
Our Board of Directors
Richard Brown
Chair of the Board of Directors and Managing Principal
Richard was appointed as Eckler’s Managing Principal in May 2023 and Chair of the Board of Directors in April 2024. As Managing Principal, Richard has direct responsibility for continuing the firm’s almost 100-year legacy of providing best-in-class advice and services to our clients, while also helping to drive innovation and uphold our award-winning culture.
With 20 years of experience in the pension industry, Richard is an risk management expert. Richard joined Eckler in 2013 as a pension actuary, and has 20 years of experience analyzing and advising pension plans sponsors regarding the management of a wide range of risks. In 2015, Richard immersed himself into the world of longevity risk management through Eckler’s launch of Club Vita, a longevity analytics business, in Canada.
Marie-Andrée Boucher
Deputy Managing Principal
A qualified actuary (FCIA, FSA), Marie-Andrée leads Eckler’s Montreal-based life insurance consulting practice. She has led several types of assignments, namely: Appointed actuary-related work, financial condition testing (FCT), embedded values, appraisal value assignments and pricing of both life and accident and sickness products. She is also involved in assignments related to the IFRS 17 Standard. She has a strong knowledge of AVE and AXIS.
Since 2012, Marie-Andrée has been the appointed actuary for a foreign life insurance company and, since 2016, for two Canadian companies. She has been a member of the Committee on Life Insurance Financial Reporting (CLIFR) for the Canadian Institute of Actuaries Committee) since 2016, Vice-Chair of that committee in 2017 and 2018 and Chair since 2019.
Chris Brisebois
With Eckler since 2009, Chris led the firm’s largest pension and benefits practice from 2020 to 2024. He also led the practice’s investment consulting team for five years.
Chris has 25 years of broad experience in the pension consulting, investment consulting, and investment management fields. He also led Eckler’s Investment Consulting practice for five years. He has served a wide variety of clients during his career and has special expertise in providing meaningful and practical advice in areas such as asset allocation and investment policy, performance evaluation, modelling, and investment manager selection.
Naomi Denning
A Principal in our Vancouver office, Naomi leads Eckler’s largest investment consulting practice. She brings over 30 years of investment consulting experience with a wide range of clients – including pension plans, government funds, endowments/foundations, employee life and health trusts, health and welfare trusts, family offices, insurance companies and other reserve funds. Naomi works primarily with clients in BC and Western Canada. She also chairs Eckler’s Responsible Investment Committee covering ESG practice.
Naomi has a particular passion for helping boards improve their governance and decision-making. She has also participated extensively on board and advisory committees. She has completed numerous governance projects with investment boards to assess their structure, processes, focus and time allocation, and decision-making effectiveness.
Louis-Christian Dupuis
A Principal in our property and casualty insurance practice, Louis-Christian joined Eckler in 1996 and has over 25 years of experience as an actuarial consultant.
Louis-Christian has extensive knowledge in the valuation of policy liabilities. He gained this expertise through his work as Appointed Actuary, and as external reviewer of the work of other Appointed Actuaries for several Canadian property and casualty insurers. He’s also an expert in the complex areas of economic scenario generation and stochastic simulation for capital modelling purposes.
Andrew Kulyk
A Principal in Eckler’s Winnipeg office, Andrew joined the firm in 2010. He works with a broad range of pension plan clients in the public and private sectors, across various jurisdictions including several University pension plans in Ontario and Manitoba.
Throughout his career, Andrew has advised corporations, boards of trustees, and pension committees on pension and employee benefits matters including all aspects of valuation, administration, plan design, governance, funding and accounting for pension, post-retirement and supplemental pension programs. Andrew’s other experience includes valuation of workers’ compensation claims liabilities, criminal rate of interest calculations, and homestead and life interest calculations.
Philippe Laplante
Philippe is a Principal, responsible for the group benefits practice in Eckler’s Montreal office. He has 20+ years of consulting experience in group benefits, pension plans and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
His expertise in group benefits and pension consulting centers on strategic issues, plan design at the national level, communication to plan sponsors and participants. He also provides clients with technical actuarial analysis for cost projections, group benefits negotiation at renewal/market search, pension actuarial funding valuation and accounting disclosures.
Lisa Wade
Lisa is a consulting actuary and Principal based in Eckler’s Barbados office where she leads its actuarial practice. She joined the Board of Directors in 2021.
She has been consulting to a wide range of clients since joining the Barbados office in 1999. At Eckler, her work is focused on the employee benefits practice and she advises public and private sector clients in the Caribbean. Her areas of expertise include actuarial valuations, post employment accounting, plan design and implementation for defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans and regulatory compliance.
