The CBC that Christine Wilson recalls joining 30 years ago was one that had men in top management accompanied by a giant typing pool.

Before she leaves the CBC on March 31 for a private sector job she’s not talking about, Wilson on Tuesday looked backwards to when women at Canada’s public broadcaster started thinking their typing fingers should be put to better use.

“I worked beside women who could not be members of the pension plan because a married woman could not be considered a full-time permanent employee,” she remembered of her early days at the CBC.

Before eventually heading into top management herself, Wilson worked in the CBC’s audience research department where Canada’s TV landscape had the CTV as the market leader, Global Television not far behind, leaving the CBC with an impressive market share of between 20% and 25%.

The only other main competition was from the Big Three U.S. networks.

All that changed with the emergence of a specialty channels and audience fragmentation.

And Wilson in recent years has helped lead a CBC that, like rival broadcasters, has been buffeted by the internet and other existing and emerging digital platforms.

If anything, she remembers the events of September 11, 2001 as a gut-check moment that signaled the CBC needed to adapt to the demands of a 24-hour news cycle met by an online world of websites and social media.

“I thought about the events of 9/11, that drove people to consume what we were calling then new media. Now we don’t call it new media,” Wilson explained.

She admits to feeling a mix of trepidation and elation at leaving the mother ship after three decades, during which time Wilson went through two marriages and the death of her parents.

If anything, Wilson leaves the CBC knowing it as “family,” both personally and professionally.

“Honestly, it’s really hard. I’ve been looking at this particular timing for over a year. You know when something feels right. So it’s now,” she confided.

Wilson is also leaving a CBC that, like rival conventional broadcasters, is in a Darwinian struggle with digital competitors, where new market entrants are daily setting up in Canada.

The result is a pubcaster looking outwardly as never before for new partners and market opportunities.

“By necessity, and because it makes for better programming and better service to Canadians, the CBC is much more partner-friendly. We’re much more externally focused [and] we’re much more about how can we provide better service by partnering with other companies in terms of operations [and] in terms of production,” Wilson insisted.

And despite the uncertainty that besets the Canadian TV industry, she sees exciting opportunities ahead in media.

“I’ve been chatting a lot with folks internally and externally about the extent to which there’s almost a paradigm shift in the way media is being consumed,” Wilson observed.

“Whatever I do, I for sure want to be part of that,” she added.