Innovation in infrastructure and energy is no longer optional for institutional investors; it sits at the centre of how they protect beneficiaries’ futures, Jennifer Manning says. That pressure to evolve is reshaping the legal questions she tackles and the way she approaches her role.
Manning now works at the junction of capital, infrastructure and technology as director and senior counsel at British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) in Vancouver. Her path runs through big-firm project finance, public-sector procurement and a cleantech start-up, and she says lawyers chasing predictability are not suited to this area.
She began her career at Torys LLP in the corporate department, focusing on infrastructure and project finance, including the financing of the Deh Cho Bridge in Fort Providence, Northwest Territories. Travelling north for the closing changed how she saw the work. She recalls seeing “where the bridge was going to be built and why, and what it meant to the community that was there,” which pushed her toward roles closer to the assets and communities behind the transactions rather than staying in a purely advisory lane.
That search for proximity made Infrastructure Ontario (IO) a logical next step. Manning moved from being one junior on a large-firm deal team to “the legal voice” embedded with commercial and finance professionals working on public-private partnerships. She describes a structure similar to BCI, in which one lawyer is paired with an internal team, and the shift forced her to own issues quickly and to understand how non-legal colleagues weigh risk and value on complex projects.
The leap from IO to NRStor Inc. was bigger and riskier. A recruiter’s call from the then-small energy storage company, led by former Home Depot Canada CEO Annette Verschuren, came when she had young twins and a two-year-old at home, yet the prospect of helping commercialize battery storage technology proved hard to ignore. “After meeting with her, I decided to jump into her new venture,” she says. She became vice president and general counsel in a hybrid legal and business position, helping secure long-term power purchase agreements and push new storage solutions into the market.
One of the high points, she says, was the development of the Oneida project, “which is a large-scale energy storage project with Six Nations of the Grand River.” Negotiating a ground-breaking Indigenous equity model demanded that she move beyond narrow legal risk-spotting into structuring, strategy and stakeholder management.
A relocation to Vancouver with her family before the pandemic prompted her to look for a platform that combined steady deal flow, global reach and a strong local presence. That led her to BCI, one of Canada’s largest institutional investors, where she now focuses on infrastructure and energy investments and sits on the boards of a district energy business and a social infrastructure company. “One of the best parts of the job is that it’s a great mix,” she says. “You work, day to day, on asset management matters, which means I’ll be answering legal questions from the business teams on assets spanning multiple sectors and jurisdictions.
BCI uses external counsel on major cross-border deals, but Manning is clear that in-house lawyers cannot outsource judgment: “You are expected to be knee deep in the deal and be able to answer questions to your business teams all the time,” she says. Her board roles reinforce that expectation. She notes that she sits on two boards “as an investor, not as a lawyer,” and she does not provide legal advice there. For in-house counsel who want similar opportunities, she argues that the ability “to really dig into the business and to be able to understand it is critical if you’re going to sit on the board of a business and to be able to contribute meaningfully,” and she credits those roles with sharpening her judgment on deals she now supports from BCI’s side.
Technology is another pressure point where she is pushing both herself and her advisers to adapt. Internally, she says, “we are actively encouraged to be thinking about, for example, how AI can create efficiencies within our own roles and continue to add value. Maintaining, of course, all of the legal and ethical challenges that it brings.” Her focus is on using tools that eliminate routine work, freeing up time to do more of the critical thinking clients demand. Externally, she expects law firms to be explicit about how they use technology on her matters. “We want to work with firms that genuinely embrace innovation, and how they use AI and other technologies is a critical part of that.”
On the investment side, she is watching the growth of data centres and the strain that artificial intelligence is putting on infrastructure systems. Infrastructure and energy are “long-term investments,” she says, and BCI’s challenge is to balance opportunity with risk while staying true to the values of the public-sector clients whose pensions it manages.
For lawyers considering a move into infrastructure or energy, either in-house or at a firm, Manning does not play down the volatility but sees opportunity in the churn. Her advice to those who see gaps in their current roles is direct: “If you are wondering if there are pieces of your job that you want to bring more innovation into? The answer is, go for it, look for it and embrace it, and not just embracing new tools, but let go of 'this is how we've always done it.'"