1) What is your name, title, organization and accountability?
Marie MacDonald
Director of Intergovernmental Learning
Veterans Affairs

I am in a truly unique position, as my accountability is 50% Federal and 50% Provincial, bridging two scales of governmental agencies. I am responsible for creating cross-jurisdictional opportunities for learning. I am also a member of the National Manager's Council, a cross-Canada council that supports managers in becoming full contributors to a strong public service. What it's really about is creating opportunities for managers to reclaim their leadership abilities. We have made great progress on Prince Edward Island (P.E.I.), partially from it being such a close community.

2) When and why did you attend WLC (Women Leading Change)?
While I took the WLC in December of 1999, I first started this work with the Generative Leadership Group in June of 1996. A colleague of mine from the private sector, Paul Hickey from the Island Tel telephone group, managed to get a scholarship seat for a public servant and recommended that I go. I saw so much value at that program that I got government sponsorship to defray the costs and immediately booked a program with Rayona and IWL. It was a powerful program. I was committed to having it delivered to the senior women of P.E.I. and we drew a diverse group of women from public service, University systems, and business. There were 33 of us and we decided to call ourselves "the dangerous thirty-three."

3) What skills have you used the most since the program?
Both networking and scale distinctions are very important to my work, especially in creating value propositions, they are very useful tools in having people clarify their vision, commitment, and concerns. The underpinning for all of it is generous listening and conversations for relatedness, possibilities, and commitment. I deeply believe in co-creating new futures and that we don't do anything alone.

Beyond the skills, I have become clear about who I am, what I stand for, and what I'm committed to. It has opened up a whole new way for handling personal and professional relationships. I now have access to gifts and skills that I had but was unaware of and have also rekindled my real passion and courage.

4) What results are you most proud of having produced?
Definitely the fact that six IWL programs that have been offered here. We have given this gift to over one hundred women and off of the top of my head I know of ten women that have come back and told me that it has changed their life. We are taking this program to Ottawa in May of 2002 through a national connection. It is time that senior Federal Canadian women leaders have access to this.

5) What resources do you want from or do you have to offer the rest of the IWL community as you continue your leadership journey?
Rayona's coaching has been a tremendous resource for me. She believes in me, challenges me, but I always know that I'm not standing alone. It is an incredible source of joy and strength.

I believe we need to keep things alive, bring the Canadian alumni back together again and create real value so that it stands out and they want to participate. In P.E.I. we are starting breakfast meetings in order to ground learning deeper through a practice community. We also need to start engaging partners, to get men and women to come to the table together. Another form of practice is participating in these courses; my five years spent at the back of Rayona's training room have given me a lot of time and opportunities to integrate this work.

I love to see people discovering their own gifts, being in that kind of conversation brings me great joy, so I do a fair amount of coaching on P.E.I. and I am opening that offer to the community.

I only do things that are fun, by the way…

To contact Marie, please email her at mbmacdon@vac-acc.gc.ca.