How a professional setback gave an ex-CEO a new lease on life — and how she’s using her experience to help others.

As a teenager in Montreal, Eleanor Clitheroe painstakingly underlined the word transformation whenever it appeared in the pocket Bible she often carried. “I was really intrigued and fascinated that the Christian spiritual journey was one of transformation,” she recalls.

She recently underwent a profound transformation of her own. Clitheroe, 54, was until recently CEO of Hydro One, one of Canada’s largest utilities, where she earned more than $2 million in 2001 and sat on several corporate boards. In 2002, the National Post, Canada’s top business newspaper, put her at the top of its list of the 50 most powerful Canadian businesswomen. But a few months later, she suffered a fall from grace: After a wholesale change in the company’s board, the powers that be fired her without severance, ­publicly castigating her for alleged use of company funds for home renovations and limousines for her family. She denies all the charges of impropriety — including rumors that she expensed a chauffeur ride for her cat. “That would be an amusing picture,” she says. (She later filed a wrongful-dismissal suit that has yet to be decided.)

With her job prospects slim, Clitheroe considered veterinary school. But after attending two religious retreats, she decided to seek redemption through the seminary. She sold her house and moved, with her husband and two children, into a modest apartment for married students at the Toronto School of Theology. “The first couple months of studying were very demanding,” she recalls. “I was in tears a lot of the time just trying to figure out how to do footnotes.”

She overcame those tribulations and has since prospered. Now known at St. Cuthbert’s Anglican Church, outside Toronto, as “Reverend Ellie,” she guides her parishioners and also serves as executive director of Prison Fellowship Canada, which provides services for inmates, ex-offenders and their families. Though she admits to missing the large staff she once had at her disposal, Clitheroe is pal­pably passionate about her new mission, noting that “Moses had been in trouble with the law. David had trouble with the law. Matthew had his troubles with the law.”

Clitheroe credits her high-profile comedown with having made her a more empathic leader: “In walking beside people who have had this brokenness of life, my experience in the days after Hydro helped me understand.” In fact, she counsels CEOs to get out of the corporate suite as often as they can. “You do get somewhat removed from what’s happening day-to-day for people who are more disadvantaged,” she says. “Find something to be passionate about where you can actually engage in some way with one or a few who do not walk in your [circle]. It reminds people just how privileged we are.” 

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