CCWESTT is hosting an in-person forum on February 27, 2025, in Calgary, Alberta, facilitated by Sylvia Cheuy from the Tamarack Institute. This free event is open to the science, engineering, trades and technology (SETT) advocacy community and allies.
Event: Learning to Lead: The Power of Systems Change
Date: February 27, 2025
Time: 8:45 am – 4:30 pm Mountain Time
Place: Lumi Experience Calgary, Brookfield Place, 225 6 Ave SW, Suite 1400
Accessibility: The event will be delivered in English, with French language and ASL interpretation
Event agenda
Post-Forum Networking: 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm MT
Garage Sports Bar
Bow Valley Square
Unit #181, 250 6th Ave SW
Calgary
This event is offered in part through funding from Women and Gender Equality Canada.
What participants will learn: The Tamarack Institute supports the development of collective capacity-building towards systems change in five interconnected skills that lead to community change:
- Collaboration: How can we mobilize collaboration across sectors and groups for local and systems-level change?
- Evaluating Impact: How can we identify and amplify what works?
- Community Innovation: How can we create, test, and scale new approaches?
- Collective Leadership: How can we bring the right people together in constructive ways?
- Community Engagement: How can we engage community members to create and realize bold visions for the future?
Outcomes: This forum will provide SETT advocates and allies with new skill sets as they lead advocacy efforts toward systems change for gender equity and equality in SETT. Participant involvement in this forum will help inform and shape CCWESTT’s current systemic change project to create a National Gender Equality Report Card.
Register here
Speaker biographies
Event Facilitator
Sylvia Cheuy is the Consulting Director at the Tamarack Institute’s Collective Impact Idea Area Centre. She has spent over 20 years as a changemaker and champion of multi-sector, citizen-led change efforts. She is inspired by the capacity of communities to innovate and advance creative solutions to their most pressing issues. Sylvia first came to Tamarack as a learner when she served as the founding Executive Director of Headwaters Communities in Action (HCIA), a grassroots citizen initiative that fosters collaborative leadership and action in support of a long-term vision of well-being for Ontario’s Headwaters region. This has given her both practical knowledge and first-hand experience in the work of community and systems change using the framework of Collective Impact. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto and completed her Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo in 2013, during which she explored opportunities to create change within regional food systems. Sylvia is a skilled community change facilitator whose work has included designing and delivering capacity-building sessions, both in person and virtually, to clients across North America as well as in New Zealand, the UK, and Singapore.
Moderator
Alicia Bjarnason PGeol, FGC, MA, CCIPTM (she/her)
CCWESTT Research and Strategic Lead
Alicia is passionate about the enhancement of innovative thought through SETT (Science, Engineering, Trades and Technology) using an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) lens. After 15 years in the resource sector working as a professional geoscientist, Alicia returned to school and received a master’s degree in human geography with a focus on gendered space, corporate culture, and EDI in SETT. Alicia is registered as a Canadian Certified Inclusion Professional (CCIPTM) with the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion and has spent the past 11 years as an EDI Strategist – leading a variety of projects within the resource and non-profit sectors. Alicia has been a member of the CCWESTT Systemic Change team since 2022.
Panelists
Dr. Rachael Pettigrew
Associate Professor in Bissett School of Business at Mount Royal University.
Rachael leverages her interdisciplinary background to research topics related to gender in the workplace, inclusive organizational cultures, and policies that support employees’ care responsibilities. Recent projects have explored fathers’ parental leave use, employer adaptation to the new extended parental leave legislation, and work interruption bias. She has also investigated women and gender diverse individuals’ experiences, aspirations, and barriers faced on their path to board work. Her secondary research stream explores newcomer employment and settlement. Rachael has over 21 years of university teaching experience, is a public speaker, and is regularly engaged with industry.
Heather Campbell, B.E.Sc., LL.M., P.Eng.
(*Headshot – Photo credit to Barbara Blakey-O’Brien of Honey Creative Photo + Video)
Heather Campbell is an energy professional focused on energy transition, sustainability & inclusion. She has a B.E.Sc. in Biochemical & Chemical Engineering (Western University) & a LL.M. in Energy Law & Policy (University of Dundee). She’s a licensed professional engineer with APEGA. She is on the board of Arts Commons and she is an advisor to B.C. CICE, Western Engineering & NRC-IRAP. She was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, Calgary Black Chambers Black Achievement Award in Energy, and the 2024 Harry Jerome Decade Leader Award.
Carol has been managing the Trade Winds to Success program since 2019, a pre-trades training program for Indigenous people that has successfully propelled its graduates into apprenticeships. Carol and the Trade Winds team form partnerships with the federal and provincial governments, Indigenous organizations, local unions, and industry to collectively create a more inclusive trades workforce in Alberta, closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the trades. With over 25% of students being women, Trade Winds also addresses the gender gap within the trades.
