Michael Lee-Chin, (born 3 January 1951) is a Jamaican-Canadian billionaire businessman, and philanthropist and the chairman and CEO of Portland Holdings Inc, a privately held investment company in Ontario, Canada. Lee-Chin was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2017. In 2016, Lee-Chin was appointed chairman of the government of Jamaica's Economic Growth Council (EGC). Lee-Chin has made several large pledges and/or donations in Canada to the Royal Ontario Museum in 2003, the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, McMaster University and the Joseph Brant Hospital Foundation. Lee-Chin served as chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University. Background Lee-Chin was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, in 1951 to Aston Lee and Hyacinth Gloria Chen. Both his parents were biracial African and Jamaican-Chinese. When Lee-Chin was aged seven, his mother married Vincent Chen who had a son from a previous relationship, and the couple had seven children together, six boys and one girl. Lee-Chin's mother sold Avon products and worked as a bookkeeper for various local firms, while his stepfather ran a local grocery store. He attended the local high school, Titchfield High, between 1962 and 1969. Career In 1965, Lee-Chin's first job came working as part of the landscaping team at the Frenchman's Cove Hotel. The next year, he got a summer job working on the Jamaica Queen cruise ship, cleaning the engine room. In 1970, he went to Canada on a scholarship program sponsored by the Jamaican government to study Civil Engineering at McMaster University, and graduated in 1974. He financed his first year at university on his own but after that was able to attend on scholarship. After graduating from McMaster, Lee-Chin worked briefly as a road engineer for the Jamaican government, but unable to find work in his qualified field (and allegedly, because his Canadian wife did not like living in Jamaica), he returned to Canada where he began graduate studies in business. At first he worked as a bouncer, but later found employment as a financial advisor for Investors Group. Lee-Chin spent two years at the Investors Group, in the Hamilton, Ontario office and in 1979, moved to Regal Capital Planners and became regional manager. While at the company, in 1983, he secured a loan from the Continental Bank of Canada for C$500,000 to purchase a stake in Mackenzie Financial Group and formed Kicks Athletics with Andrew Gayle. By 1987, the investment was worth C$3.5