Meet Susan Coward, a public sector innovator who asks brave questions and finds ways to share what she is learning… even when it throws a wrench in things!
barriers to meaningful inclusion.
Current Title: Retired
Susan is still offering opinions, and volunteering, including in local electoral politics
#municipalities
#leadership
#strategist
If you receive a meaty email on Sunday night with some inspiration in the form of a new framework or podcast and musings about a shift in strategy or mindset, it might well be from Susan. As the City of Edmonton’s Manager of Urban Wellness and Team Lead of RECOVER, she took what was supposed to be a tidy “wellness centre plan” and bravely, if not gleefully, tossed it out the window—replacing it with inquiry, ethnography, prototypes, and more than a few spaghetti-on-the-wall experiments.
“I think to do this kind of work a leader really needs to do all [the learning] with their team members: roll up their sleeves, try this stuff, try the application….For this new kind of work, you do have to invest yourself in this learning journey. It’s just not the usual ‘make sure the permissions are set up and the approvals and the resources are made available.’ If the leader does only that, then when something happens, and there’s a little pressure…they’ll give it up. Because they won’t see that it is worth the investment.” –Susan Coward
- Translating big ideas into organizational strategy
- Working within hierarchical, bureaucratic organizations
- Researching and applying innovation frameworks
- Motivating and leading multi-stakeholder teams
- Integrating prototyping into policy
- Trained in adult education
- 30 years as a public servant
- 20+ years in senior management roles
- 7 years collaborating with InWithForward to develop a wellbeing framework and a suite of prototypes
