The Team
catherine Pearl, PHD, Lead instructor
CATHERINE IS Associate professor social innovation at Mount Royal University. PRIOR TO JOINING ACADEMIA, CATHERINE SPENT ALMOST TWENTY YEARS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR; IN CORPORATE PLANNING, FINANCE AND MARKETING. SHE ALSO SPENT CONSIDERABLE TIME in the NONPROFIT SECTOR as a volunteer, consultant and CEO OF A REGISTERED CHARITY THAT OPERATED A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE.
CATHERINE IS PASSIONATE ABOUT TEACHING, CURRICULUM DESIGN AND EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND OVER THE PAST four YEARS HAS BEEN INVOLVED IN COURSE DESIGN AND ‘TEST DRIVING’ MANY OF MRU’S SOCIAL INNOVATION courses.
AS LEAD INSTRUCTOR, CATHERINE IS WORKING WITH MENTORS, COACHES AND COMMUNITY PARTNERS TO CREATE A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR OUR fourth COHORT OF CIVIC INNOVATION STUDENTS. THE COURSE IS OPEN TO Any POST-SECONDARY STUDENT IN CALGARY, and once again we have students from the university of calgary as well as MOunt Royal university representing multiple disciplines.
This year’s CHALLENGE QUESTIONS ARE particularly timely AND CENTRE ON: 1) How might we leverage digital social innovation and tech for good in the city of Calgary? 2) How might we support the work of Civic Tech YYC to launch a Civic User Testing Group in the city of Calgary?
Sarah Skett, PhD, University of Calgary
Sarah is passionate about collaborative sustainable community development, from the local to the global. She began teaching at the University of Calgary in 2010 in the Geography Department while completing her Ph.D. in Human Geography. With over fifteen years of experience in International Development, she has worked in East and Southern Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific.
She is driven and inspired by local leaders and their communities to build meaningful and lasting partnerships that allow her to better understand and address their needs, and to build strategies that foster mutually beneficial projects, capacity building, and sustainable development. Sarah has experience working with vulnerable, at-risk, and culturally diverse groups, Indigenous and rural communities, the private sector, governments, NGOs, academia, and international financial institutions in multi-stakeholder projects, some carried out in multiple countries.
Kurtis Lesick, Alberta University of the Arts
Kurtis Lesick is an artist, theorist, and award-winning creative content specialist. His installations, location-based interventions, media works, digital performances, and cross-media collaborations investigate the possibilities of praxis-based philosophy. He draws heavily on his experience in archaeology, anthropology, and philosophy, as well as both his love and disdain for technology. His work and research have been presented throughout Canada, Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and was recently featured in Michael Petry’s (Curator, London MOCA) survey of text-based art: The Word is Art, Thames and Hudson.
Lesick is the past chair of the School of Craft + Emerging Media, and Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts, where he teaches in Media Arts. He was a Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol in England, has held an adjunct professorship and taught at the Digital Futures Initiative in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in Toronto, and has been visiting faculty at the Banff Centre and the University of California at Irvine. He was awarded the inaugural People’s Choice Award for the Most Inspirational Digital Leader at the first Digital Alberta Awards.
Katherine McGowan, phd, systems mapping
Katharine began her academic career as a traditional Canadian historian - and this eventually led her to be the annoying fact-checker and long-term perspective haver on social innovation at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience. Her clear joy in public speaking and mild likeability led to a position with Social Prosperity Wood Buffalo (SPWB), a community-based project in Fort McMurray that sought to support a culture of social innovation. This directly led to her current position as Assistant Professor of Social Innovation in the Bissett School of Business.
She has not abandoned her historical roots however, as she is currently delivering a first - a history of/and social innovation course, where she has already subjected serious business students to a frivolous discussion of resilience and the French Revolution. Upcoming topics include the Dutch East India Company, the Canada Health Act, Intelligence Testing, and (sigh) that new flash-in-the-pan, the Internet. Katharine is currently helming/coordination the Apaat tsi kani takiiks, a three-year Indigenization initiative that builds on the Suncor Aboriginal Business Education Pilot Program here at Bissett. That is, helming it until the incredibly impressive and driven Bissett Aboriginal students mutiny and take over the ship. She can't wait to live in the Canada they are going to (re)build.
Brent Oliver, PHD, community development
Dr. Brent Oliver is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Mount Royal University. Based in Calgary, Dr. Oliver collaborates with people living with HIV, community service providers, and researchers in leading a community-based research program in Alberta focused on HIV/AIDS, gay men’s wellness, HIV prevention, and community-based interventions.
Dr. Oliver serves on several national HIV/AIDS research teams and is a member of the leadership team for the CIHR Centre for REACH. He has worked with community and academic collaborators across Canada on a wide variety of qualitative and mixed methods research projects. He has experience designing and implementing qualitative and mixed methods research projects, collecting research data with a variety of populations, conducting qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and completing knowledge translation activities for a variety of community and academic audiences.
Karry Harmer, Human centered design
Kerry Harmer is a designer, maker and educator. Her background in industrial design, product development and education has informed her passion for Design Thinking and Human Centred Design and its ability to act as a trans disciplinary tool for complex problem solving.
In her role as the Maker Studio Specialist, Kerry shares her passion for the social impact that design has in the world through her teaching, program development, outreach, and work integrating creativity, design and technology into curricula using the Maker Studio in the Library at Mount Royal University.
Jordan Piraux, Brand and content Manager
Jordan IS An ALUMNI OF MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY'S Bcmm PROGRAM WITH A MAJOR IN information design and certificate in marketing. jordan'S PASSION FOR MARKETING FOCUSEs ON TELLING MEANINGFUL STORIES AND BUILDING SUSTAINABLE RELATIONSHIPS.
Jordan was the lead designer on multiple projects based out of MOunt royal university including otahpiaaki fashion week and the paul brandt legacy project.
although her fourth year with vivacity, she believes these challenges are opportunities for institutions to grow and learn together. these projects will help create a better calgary for those in the future.
Katherine Ziff, Citizen experiment
Before joining Mount Royal University to teach social innovation and entrepreneurship, Katherine Ziff accrued decades of experience developing exhibitions and programs for science centres and museums. She has led projects for public audiences from inception to completion, including developing exhibitions for TELUS Spark, Calgary's science centre, where she rose to Vice President of Content.
In all her roles she is passionate about developing the effectiveness, daring, and originality of creative teams.
Kathryn Blair, Experiment Design
Kathryn Blair completed her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Calgary in 2018 and has entered the PhD program in Computational Media Design there. She obtained her BFA Honours in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia in 2009.
Her work seeks to facilitate public examination of the status quo of our relationship with technology by throwing it into stark relief. Currently, she creates interactive experiences that invite visitors to play with ideas about the way computer programs used to make decisions about the public function. In the past, she has used media including wearable technology, physical computing, games and printmaking to explore these themes.
She has been involved in the Calgary-based tech couture fashion show Make Fashion since 2013, and has shown her wearable technology work in British Columbia, China, the United States and Ireland. She worked as a Public Programmer at TELUS Spark from 2013-2018 and loved setting up situations in which visitors sang like whales, drew with fake blood, and made Frankenstein toys.
Kelsey mcColgan
patrick moskwa
Mentors and Coaches
Paul Bartel, Julie Black, Matt Blough, Marissa Bernstein, Jason Cameron, Katharine Chin, Alex Draper, Erin Dumenko, Esther Elder, Court Ellingson, Julie Gunawan, Kerry Harmer, Lynn Holdsworth, Mike Hrycyk, Aamir Jamal, Hubba Khatoon, Ben Kunz, Wendy Lees, Tatenda Mambo, Taryn Meyers, Janira Moncaya, Monique Nesset, Matt Nomura, Milton Ortega, Meaghon Reid, Allison Shultz, Lisa Sierra, Ivan Sierralta, Bree Smith, James Stauch, Murray Thompson, Donovan Tymchshyn, Andrea van Vugt, Karen Whiteman, David Yiptong, Steven Yuen, Boomi Yook, Geoff Zakaib
Vivacity Alumni
Sarah Ali 2017, Kat Bravo, 2020, Ivy Damian, 2020, Danika Dinko 2020, Roshni McCartney 2020, Sara McMullan 2017, Ashley Villaflores 2020,
Community Partners
Participating institutions
