# Zita Cobb

Zita Cobb, CM, is a Canadian businesswoman and social entrepreneur who grew up on Fogo Island, a small outport fishing community off the North East coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Zita is the co-founder and CEO of the registered Canadian charity, Shorefast, which she launched with her brothers Anthony and Alan Cobb, on Fogo Island in 2004. She is also the Innkeeper of world-renowned Fogo Island Inn awarded Three Keys from The Michelin Guide. In 2024,The New York Times questioned whether she was the most radical person in travel, noting her innovative Inn has the potential to inspire “other places to create an economic model in which tourism is in service to the community, and not the other way around.”
Zita has been recognized for her significant contributions to the Canadian economy and business world garnering awards such as the Order of Canada (2016) and induction into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame (2020) with special distinction as the first social entrepreneur to be included within its ranks.
The charity Cobb founded, Shorefast, began with the mission to help build a resilient community economy on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. With an enduring commitment to Fogo Island, Shorefast partnered with five communities during the pandemic to host a pilot project designed to determine how to strengthen local economies in communities across Canada and adapt those learnings to foster economically empowered communities across Canada.
Shorefast is now expanding its impact by creating The Shorefast Network for Place-Based Economies, “to figure out how other communities across the country could likewise build up local economies rooted in the particulars of a place.” The Network will offer platforms and tools for more communities, entrepreneurs, and leaders to learn and share best practices for community economic development.
Zita Cobb volunteers her full time to Shorefast.

## Early life and education

Cobb is an eighth-generation Fogo Islander. Cobb has six brothers, and her father was a 7th generation inshore fisherman. She grew up in a household with no electricity or running water. She battled and survived tuberculosis at the age of six during a year spent at a sanatorium, which she credits for the confidence that she carried with her later into her career. Cobb studied business and graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa.

## Career

Cobb started working with various oil companies in Alberta, and traveling in Canada and Africa. She worked at Ottawa-based JDS Fitel for ten years and became the CFO. The company merged with the U.S. company Uniphase in 1999 to become JDS Uniphase. In 2001, she exercised stock options worth US$69 million, and left the company to sail around the world for 4 years.

## Fogo Island Inn

In 2006, Cobb and her brother Anthony founded Shorefast, a Canadian social enterprise, in response to the economic and cultural difficulties her Newfoundland outport home had experienced over the past decades. She contributed $10 million of her own money to the organization. The Canadian government contributed $5 million, and the provincial government contributed another $5 million. Shorefast built the Fogo Island Inn, which opened in 2013 and continues to be operated by Shorefast Social Enterprises Inc. The inn is a 100% social business, and all operating surpluses are reinvested in the community of Fogo Island through the projects and programs of Shorefast. The inn aims to build another leg on the existing economies of the island and to provide employment.

## Honours and awards

On June 30, 2016, Cobb was made a Member of the Order of Canada by Governor General David Johnston for "her contributions as a social entrepreneur who has helped revive the unique rural communities of Fogo Island and Change Islands through innovative social engagement and geotourism."
She has been recognized with honorary doctorate degrees from Carleton University, Memorial University of Newfoundland, McGill University and University of Ottawa.
Cobb was inducted into the Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame in May 2018.
On November 12, 2019, Cobb interviewed 44th President of the United States Barack Obama for a public event at the Mile One Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, which was hosted by the St. John's Board of Trade. More than 5,000 people attended the discussion, which covered topics of community, climate change and democracy.