 It was during her time at York that she became involved with the student protest movement of the 1960s and joined the Young Socialists of Canada.An openly bisexual woman, DiNovo was the only woman to sign Canada's first gay liberation manifesto "We Demand" in 1971.DiNovo left university shy of her degree and began working for a corporate headhunting firm, then in the early 1980s ran her own firm - the Abbott Group, a recruitment firm that specialized in placing women in high-profile jobs - for five years.