Gordon Ritchie joined Hill & Knowlton in July 1999 as Chairman of the Public Affairs Practice for Canada. Gordon also serves as a director of a number of major Canadian corporations including Cambior Inc., Laurentian Bank of Canada and Maple Leaf Foods Inc. He is active in community affairs, serves on a number of advisory boards and is Chairman of the board of the Ottawa Heart Institute.

As Ambassador for Trade Negotiations, Gordon was one of the principal architects of the Canada-USA free trade agreement. His experiences are recounted in Wrestling with the Elephant: The Inside Story of the Canada-US Trade Wars (Macfarlane, Walter and Ross, 1997). That assignment capped a distinguished 22-year public service career in trade, and industrial and economic development. Other senior posts included Associate Deputy Minister of the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion and Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of State for Economic Development.On his retirement from government in 1988, Gordon founded Strategico Inc., giving advice on trade and business strategies to leading companies in a variety of sectors.

Gordon  is fluently bilingual. He was trained in economics and administration at Carleton University, l’Ecole nationale d’administration publique and the Harvard Business School.  He and his wife, Marg, have two children and three grandchildren.