By Miranda Eng
As a member of our Consulting and Training Services team, I was thrilled to see one of our completed projects launch a few weeks ago – SFU’s Outstanding Alumni Awards (OAA) program. It was some light during such starkly devastating times, from the manufactured starvation in Gaza, to ICE raids and anti-trans legislative action, to anti-EDI rhetoric and opposition, to economic challenges and environmental catastrophes all around. As a parent I know you’re not supposed to pick favourites, but this project was special.
On OAA’s partnership and process
It’s hopeful and promising to see a new set of categories, nomination questions, and scoring criteria and rubric come out as a result of our work with the Outstanding Alumni Awards project team. While deliverables are often the focus of consulting work, for me, it was the project’s partnership and process that I continue to reflect on. They offer a guiding light on what systems change at the individual and institutional levels could be.
Partnering with Ophelia Yu (Director, SFU Alumni Relations) and Denise Williams (2022 OAA recipient, nationally respected Indigenous leader and consultant), this project allowed us to deeply analyze, interrogate, and recommend changes to a long-standing decision-making system (process, people, criteria, questions, etc) setting out what and who SFU should recognize.
It was powerful, joyful, and healing to come together in our jam sessions to crack open colonial, traditional views of success, achievement, and being outstanding, and reimagine a more expansive view.
As a recovering business school graduate, I don’t know why the curriculum was (and continues to be) so focused on synergy yet not on trust, especially when individual and institutional change work is so personal and hard. Our team’s bond allowed for the magic of bringing together our lenses and lived experiences as a team of Indigenous, racialized, and migrant humans who have navigated and experienced higher education and other institutional environments that historically and often continue to undervalue and devalue perspectives and work like ours. It was powerful, joyful, and healing to come together in our jam sessions to crack open colonial, traditional views of success, achievement, and being outstanding, and reimagine a more expansive view.
Some of the new categories and criteria include valuing:
- efforts that advance Truth and Reconciliation through leading, honouring, preserving, uplifting, and decolonizing;
- processes that are about respectful engagement and relationship (the “how”), not just about delivering outputs and research publications (the “what”);
- community leadership and advocacy, and not just research and institutional roles;
- not just the contributions, but the impact on issues at the community, local, national, or global levels;
- the resilience of the nominee and their creativity and courage to overcome barriers or remove them for others; and
- leadership demonstrated at any age, and doesn’t paternalize early career and youth contributions.
You can read more about our process and new categories here, and our new criteria here.
Work in Truth and Reconciliation is and should be distinct and foundational, and EDI, if done with a decolonizing systems change lens, can uplift and support this Indigenous-led work.
I appreciated how Ophelia and SFU Alumni encouraged and empowered us to be transformative, which is difficult and brave in a large institution. Importantly, they designed and supported this project in a way that distinguished the streams of work for Indigenous engagement and review led by Denise, separate from our equity review, and allowed us to come together and share and strengthen our findings and deliverables. In my own aha moments working with trusted partners over the years, I have learned how the EDI sector has often contributed to erasing and collapsing the rights, sovereignty, gifts, and needs of Indigenous Peoples. Work in Truth and Reconciliation is and should be distinct and foundational, and EDI, if done with a decolonizing systems change lens, can uplift and support this Indigenous-led work. We often see projects and calls for proposals calling for EDI only or cramming in both streams within scopes and budgets, which can harm, not meaningfully address inequities, and dilute the long-term process and possibilities of systems change.
On decision-making
A lot of RADIUS’ work and consulting is around transforming the decisions impacting the flow of capital, diversity of staff and leadership teams, and economic inclusion. This looks like:
- our Participatory Grantmaking Initiative that co-designed ways with community to minimize common barriers to grant funding,
- our recruitment training sessions and audits with organizational clients and university staff, faculty, and leaders where we interrogate biases and structural barriers for hiring, and
- our ongoing work with a municipality to include equity considerations in major capital and facility investment decisions.
The organizations we work with – who design and deliver the programs, education, and policies impacting our communities – are often steeped in colonial views that continue to benefit some but not many. This upholds specific ways people should behave and how things should be done, negating and erasing the gifts and wisdom that many of us have within us and bring to improve our systems and society.
This is an example of how decolonization and deep equity work are not add-ons or standalone initiatives, but are necessities to rectify and create fairer opportunities, expand the lenses and perspectives of leaders, and simplify and strengthen decision-making processes. And these shouldn’t just be categorized as EDI work – these are modern day leadership competencies and processes needed to ultimately our teams, who can better support their work and communities, leading to a more vibrant, just world.
It was a privilege to deepen this work with the SFU Alumni Relations Office, which started over a year ago when my RADIUS teammates Raph and Alia delivered an EDI training session to the OAA decision-making committee, and are preparing to do so again for this upcoming cycle.
The renewed Outstanding Alumni Awards are open for nominations now and closes on August 25, 2025.
Also, fun fact that our Migrant Systems Change Leadership alumni are eligible for nominations!
Interested in growing these competencies of inclusive leadership? Our team is offering a two-day Masterclass this October. Sign up today!