Michèle Thibodeau was the eldest of a family of four children. She received her diploma from the Sacred Heart Convent in 1957. When she was 17, her father, an architect, encouraged her to enrol at École Polytechnique of Montréal. She was the first woman to earn a degree in civil engineering in 1963, Also that year, she married Pierre-André DeGuire.. The first woman to graduate from Polytechnique, is an honor that corresponds to Gabrielle Bodis, Diplôme en mécanique–électricité in 1959.
Career
Thibodeau-DeGuire worked for nearly 20 years as a structural engineer, starting in 1963 with Lalonde Girouard Letendre. In 1975 she became a consulting engineer at Francis Boulva and Associates. She built several bridges and worked in particular on the construction of the walls of the Décarie Expressway. From 1982 to 1984, Thibodeau-DeGuire served as General Delegate of Québec in Boston, maintaining relations with multiple levels of government in six states in the northeastern United States. In 1985 Thibodeau-DeGuire joined the staff of École Polytechnique of Montréal, first as assistant to the president, then in 1986 she became director of public relations. In December 1989, she was responsible for the institution's communication when the École Polytechnique massacre took place. The school president and director were in Europe and Thibodeau-DeGuire showed admirable leadership throughout the crisis and in the organization of commemorative events and outreach which followed. From April 1991 to 31 December 2012 Thibodeau-DeGuire was president and CEO of Centraide of Greater Montréal. She was at the origin of project "1, 2, 3, Go" which helped children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Under her leadership, fundraising increased from $23 million to $58.7 million, mainly through increasing major donors from 3,000 to 8,000. In January 2013, Thibodeau-DeGuire succeeded Bernard Lamarre as Chairman of the Board of the Corporation of the École Polytechnique of Montréal with a five-year term. In 2014 Thibodeau-DeGuire agreed to chair the selection committee for the Order of the White Rose, a $30,000 national scholarship for female engineering graduate students, in memory of the victims of the massacre 25 years earlier. In 2013 Centraide launched the Michèle-Thibodeau-DeGuire Award, which annually recognizes an outstanding volunteer of the charity.
