2023 CMS-Sector Research Collaborations Day

• Mary Point

Mary Point is a member of the Musqueam Indian Band - former Musqueam Community Planner and Facilities Manager, she is currently the Director of Indigenous Relations at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and the Relationship Manager for the Musqueam Indian Band - YVR Airport Sustainability Friendship Agreement. Mary helps to further develop the relationship between Musqueam and YVR, facilitating the elements of this agreement, exploring new opportunities to learn from one another, and developing a global Indigenous peoples strategy with a focus on reconciliation. Mary is an accomplished Indigenous professional that weaves culture, protocol, and best practices into strategic planning for those seeking to do business with First Nations individuals and organizations. She has worked throughout British Columbia for two decades, developing strategic partnerships with a range of First Nations communities and local businesses and has received awards for writing, community action and, was a recent nominee for YWCA’s Women of Distinction Award for Reconciliation in Action.

• Shandin Pete

Dr. Shandin Pete (Salish/Diné) is from the Flathead Indian Reservation in Arlee, Montana. He is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia in the Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences department where he applies geoscientific ethnographic principles to advance understandings of Indigenous research methodologies from Salish philosophical commitments. His work includes collaboration with tribal knowledge holders across Indigenous communities and academic scholars to examine traditions, customs, oral histories and knowledge systems and their intersection with geoscience. He is also co-founder of Tribal Research Specialist, LLC, providing ethnographic and educational research and consultation.

• Norm Leech

Norm speaks widely on inter-generational trauma due to colonization. He grew up in East Vancouver, with ancestry in the T’it’q’et community of the St’at’imc nation where he has served as Chief and also Administrator. He draws on his experiences as a recovering alcoholic/ addict, inter-generational survivor, and spiritual explorer to inform his current work. Norm currently serves as the ED of Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House. FHNH serves the Renfrew Rupert Area in east Vancouver with a variety of programs including childcare, settlement, training, youth, families, seniors, and women’s services. Other roles include; Aboriginal Front Door Society President, Metro Vancouver Aboriginal Executive Council Co-Chair, Co-Chair VPD Indigenous Advisory Committee, Downtown Community Court Advisory Committee, Chair DTES Community Land Trust, among others.

• Shan Hongxia

Dr. Shan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the changing work and learning practices in the context of immigration, globalization, and transnationalism. She has conducted various research projects on immigration and integration including community-based partnership research projects with immigrant services organizations. She has published in the areas of work and learning, knowledge “transfer” and translation, lifelong learning, organizational learning, diversity work, and migration, integration, and transnationalism.

• Olga Stachova

Olga Stachova is the CEO of MOSAIC: a registered charity serving immigrant, refugee, migrant and mainstream communities in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley, as well as throughout the province of BC. Olga joined MOSAIC after a long career as Chief Operating Officer at Mitacs, a national non-profit organization delivering research and training programs to graduate and postgraduate students in Canada through partnerships with the private sector and the federal and provincial governments. Olga is the recipient of the 2009 Business in Vancouver Top Forty Under 40 Award, as well as the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. She currently serves on the Invest Vancouver Management Board as well as a Co-Chair of the IRCC National Settlement and Integration Service Delivery Committee.

• Sean Lauer

Prof. Lauer's current research explores social infrastructure and integration with projects examining interethnic relationships and friendship formation through participation in community organizations. I use institutional and network approaches to study marriage, friendship, immigration, and community organizations. As a scholar, I embrace engaged and collaborative research, including the research in Neighbourhood Houses: Building Community in Vancouver.

• Hafsa Khan

Hafsa Khan is a graduate of the Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs Program at the UBC. She has been working in the settlement and integration sector for nearly 8 years in a variety of positions including as a program developer, volunteer coordinator and grant writer. In her most recent position, Hafsa works as a Policy and Research Analyst at AMSSA. She is passionate about social development, especially as it relates to refugee & immigrant rights, women’s rights, and increasing global access to education.Having immigrated to Canada in 2001, Hafsa often grapples with her identity as someone with ethnic ties to a land that was previously colonized while simultaneously being a settler to Canada.

• Suzanne Huot

My research explores humans in daily occupation and activities, that is, occupations beyond paid employments and all activities that occupy an individual’s time. Using approaches informed by occupational science, qualitative methodologies, and critical social theory, my research focuses on the occupational implications of international migration to Canada and the experiences of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. My research examines individuals at the local scale in relation to social inclusion and I have also analyzed the integration of French-speaking immigrants in Francophone minority communities in Canada.

• Katie Crocker

Katie Crocker is the Chief Executive Officer of AMSSA, a British Columbia provincial umbrella association that strengthens over 80 member agencies as well as hundreds of community stakeholder agencies who serve immigrants and newcomers. Katie represents the BC Settlement Sector on the National Settlement and Integration Council and is a Board Director for the Canadian Immigrant Settlement Sector Alliance (CISSA-ACSEI), the national body for settlement umbrella associations. Katie is also on the Executive Committee of the UBC Centre for Migration Studies and is the CoChair of Pathways to Prosperity, Katie brings an expertise in supporting neurodiverse children and their families as a mother of a child with Autism and a Board Director of UNITI. She has a deep interest in the settlement and integration journey of newcomers and strives to learn about and take accountability for the inherent privilege she has to live, work and raise her children in these unceded territories that have been stewarded by First Nations since time immemorial.

• Sean Lauer

Prof. Lauer's current research explores social infrastructure and integration with projects examining interethnic relationships and friendship formation through participation in community organizations. I use institutional and network approaches to study marriage, friendship, immigration, and community organizations. As a scholar, I embrace engaged and collaborative research, including the research in Neighbourhood Houses: Building Community in Vancouver.

• Antje Ellermann

Prof. Antje Ellermann is an immigrant settler of German origin and lives as an uninvited guest on the beautiful, shared territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), together with her spouse and their teenage daughter. She is a Professor of Political Science and the Co-Director of the UBC Centre for Migration Studies. Her research focuses on the politics of migration and citizenship in liberal democracies. She currently works on projects examining the intersection of migration and citizenship, settler colonialism, and Indigeneity, as well as the comparative work of immigration bureaucracies.