Chow is a former Canadian politician who served as federal New Democratic Party Member of Parliament for Trinity-Spadina from 2006–2014, and Toronto city councillor from 1991 to 2005. Chow is the widow of former NDP and Opposition Leader Jack Layton; they were married from 1988 until his death from cancer in 2011. She was a candidate in the 2014 Toronto mayoral election, where she placed third behind winner John Tory and runner-up Doug Ford.
Chow won the Trinity—Spadina riding for the New Democratic Party on January 23, 2006, becoming a member of the House of Commons of Canada. In 2011, she was re-elected in her riding for her third straight win. She speaks Cantonese, Mandarin and English. In May 2012, Chow was named one of the top 25 Canadian immigrants in Canada by Canadian Immigrant magazine. Chow's personal memoir, titled My Journey, was published January 21, 2014. Chow resigned her seat in parliament on March 12, 2014, to run in the 2014 Toronto mayoral election. Following her mayoral election loss, Chow became a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University from 2015 to 2018.

He holds a B.Sc. Com. (summa cum laude) and an MBA from the Université de Sherbrooke and a PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
He was the co-founder of, and from 1975 to 1990, the Chair of the Board of the SECOR Group, a major Canadian strategic consulting group which became KPMG-Secor in 2012. During this time, he played a critical role in establishing the joint doctoral program in administration in the four Montréal universities, and the executive MBA program at UQAM’s management science school, the École des sciences de la gestion (ESG).
He was Executive Vice-President of Bombardier from 1996 to 2001 and served on many different Boards of Directors. In 2001, he became a professor emeritus of strategy at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and has been the Executive Chair of the Board of the Institute for governance (IGOPP) since 2005. His contribution as Chair of the task force led to the enactment of Québec’s Act Respecting the Governance of State-Owned Enterprises in 2006. He has published over a hundred works and articles covering every aspect of corporate governance, the most recent of which were co-authored with Mihaela Firsirotu.
From 2010 to 2014, Allaire was first, a member and then, Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Role of Business.
He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada since 1991, and in 2001, received the Award of Distinction from Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business for his extraordinary contribution to the business world and the community. The Academy of Economic Sciences of Bucharest awarded him a doctorate honoris causa in 1995. In 2001, he was also chosen as one of 12 “High Performers” by Commerce magazine and, in 2008, the Financial Post Magazine named him one of Canada's six Business Gurus.