The University of Ottawa stands in a unique position: Our bilingualism protects our institution’s history and identity while enriching global engagement. Our commitment to both academic freedom and mutual respect and reconciliation enriches our core mission: to teach and to learn.
Over the past three years, I have centred these values serving on the Governing Board. I seek a second term to continue providing our professors and librarians with a persuasive, energetic, experienced and knowledgeable voice on the Board, keeping the University’s core mission central in ever more urgent fiscal and policy discussions.
Passionately committed to our community, experienced in academic leadership, at home in our Governing Board’s unique context, skilled at complex moral reasoning and creative problem solving, driven by respect, integrity and care, and sensitive to both local and global contexts, I stand for re-election to help steer the University through uncertain waters.
I bring the rights tools for the job:
- I understand the local context – our bilingualism, our spirit of innovation, our role in local communities – because I grew up at uOttawa. I toddled around after my student parents, alumni of the Faculty of Education. I hid, reading, in Morisset’s stacks as a tween, and participated eagerly in uOttawa’s high school enrichment programs (a debt I now repay mentoring local AP capstone students). And fifteen years ago, after positions at the University of Chicago and Yale, I came home to Ottawa as a faculty member.
- I understand the Board context. After three years of attentive, engaged and vocal service, I know our Board’s personalities and procedures, its problems and possibilities. I’m steeped in the issues and their history. I understand from the inside our fiscal storm and the values that must guide us through. I have been twice appointed to serve on the Executive Committee. And I have devoted time to study the legal and moral roles, responsibilities and purposes of university boards generally. I know this job and I know how to do it well. At this critical time, we need a Board member who is up to speed, and can bring a new faculty colleague up to speed too, so we can both hit the ground running and serve together as an effective voice.
- I understand the global context: Having studied and worked at universities across Asia, Europe and North America, I’m familiar with a wide landscape of higher education issues and diverse solutions.
- I’m comfortable with moral complexity: Academic training in ethics, practical experience on government Commissions of Inquiry and at Justice Canada, and years of teaching moral reasoning to our public affairs students mean I have a substantive toolbox for engaging uOttawa’s morally complex policy challenges with open ears and an open mind.
- I have experience in public, private, and non-profit sectors. Our Board hail from across this spectrum. Having worked in criminal law policy for Justice Canada, and on a major regulatory economics project for A.T. Kearney, and together with lawyers on the Hogue and Rouleau Commissions, I have context and knowledge to effectively communicate with Board colleagues.
- I have unique leadership experience: Beyond leading uOttawa’s programme in Conflict Studies and Human Rights, I served for three years as Associate Dean of Faculty leading the development and consolidation of Asia’s first liberal arts college curriculum. A joint project of Yale and the National University of Singapore, that curriculum draws on traditions of East and West, Global South and Global North. In that role I worked with diverse and sometimes opposed stakeholders and became known for my creative solutions to problems that respected the needs of distinct parties: I always centralise partnership and mutual respect. I worked collaboratively with student government to help address academic wellness concerns. I consolidated and streamlined policies and procedures to respect the time of both faculty and staff colleagues. I undertook recruitment efforts, including at the most senior levels, experience critical to my current work on uOttawa’s Board where we are now recruiting a new Provost and will soon recruit our next President. At home and abroad, I have helped manage an unprecedented series of crises - environmental, political, fiscal, and health related, including leading Yale-NUS curriculum’s move online as COVID hit. At home and abroad, I have developed acute organizational awareness, as well as knowledge of governance and funding issues in higher education;
- I have the passion, energy, commitment, and empathy to serve our community and provide an effective voice for our faculty and librarians. As an active scholar and passionate teacher, I understand the joys and challenges of research and of guiding students’ intellectual development. As a minority community member, I know mutual respect must be central to everything we do.
At uOttawa, I first encountered scholarship as a youngster. And it was uOttawa’s compassionate environment that supported my scholarly ambitions, when, as a junior faculty member I was also an exhausted solo parent. I owe our community much. Through my experiences in leadership at home and abroad I have worked hard to cultivate the skills and knowledge to do my part in return.
In standing for re-election to the Board of Governors I want to continue to make good on that promise. If re-elected, I will continue to serve our community of learning energetically. Solution oriented, experienced, integrity-driven, principled, and committed, I can help uOttawa navigate the rocky shoals of an uncharted future. I thank you in advance for your support.