Working in our government and public service practice allows me to provide an Indigenous perspective when addressing issues of reconciliation, social justice, and the economic empowerment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Growing up in Alberta's Cold Lake First Nation, I witnessed a lot of unnecessary suffering. That's why I'm passionate about working with Indigenous peoples and communities to create meaningful and positive changes in their lives, families, communities, and nations. In the past five years, Canada has made significant improvements in its relationship with Indigenous peoples. But the journey isn’t over. By creating diversity, equity, inclusion, and reconciliation inside Deloitte, our creative and intelligent people can work with all levels of government to address the many public policy challenges our country faces. I believe the best of Canada is still to come.

As a manager in our public sector transformation practice, I help Canadian organizations define and realize their mandates for creating a positive impact on society. Specifically, I work with municipalities, provincial ministries, and Crown corporations to reshape them into regulators of the future, ones that will help mitigate the disproportionate impact that vulnerable populations face. We help clients undertake simple measures, such as updating the language and terminology of regulations, and more substantial changes, such as implementing online and transparent processes. Values like accountability and inclusiveness must be embedded throughout all touchpoints between Canadian citizens and their regulators, and Canada has an immense diversity of cultures to include in those touchpoints. If public sector organizations listen to as many of those different perspectives as possible, they can make fully informed decisions.

As the firm’s national digital government leader, I work with government clients across Canada to modernize their technology and deliver great services. The digital arena has often been male-dominated. But that’s changing, as it’s been made sensitive to the importance of building diverse, inclusive teams. And since our team’s goal is to help drive digital government services into the future—building governance and processes to help make those services inclusive, sustainable, and accountable for all people across Canada—we also need to build equal representation into our world-class teams in order to succeed. It isn’t just the right choice—it’s the smart one. We create better, more effective services when our teams look like the diverse people we and our clients serve.