Heather Culbert concludes her two-year term as Jarislowsky Fellow in Business Management

Heather Culbert took on the role of Jarislowsky Fellow in Business Management in September 2020 and has been a key leader throughout her term. Her diverse experience allowed her to engage many of our Haskayne MBA and EMBA students in multiple in-person and virtual events where opportunity for networking and leadership development presented itself. During her first term, Heather co-hosted a virtual fireside chat with previous Jarislowsky Fellow, Art Korpach, engaging a small group of students on topics including corporate governance and the importance of equity, diversity and inclusion in leadership.

The Jarislowsky Co-fellows in Business Management spend many hours in virtual meetings to plan an engaging year for students and create meaningful opportunities for them. Going into her second year of virtual programming, Heather worked hard to overcome the challenges of Zoom fatigue and to keep students engaged. She kicked off the year with an unscripted virtual Q&A where the theme, a Year of Transformation, was introduced. A series of transformational leadership challenges then followed where five industry leaders were featured and had conversations with the students around these challenges.

For winter 2022, Heather kicked the year off with a Women in Leadership Webinar featuring the CIWB winners and lastly, the sought after Jarislowsky dinner and discussion was her final event of the academic year where she gave her farewell speech that inspired many.

Below is our interview with Heather to learn more about her experience as a Jarislowsky Fellow at the Haskayne School of Business.

What motivated you to participate in the Jarislowsky Fellowship? I am a big fan of the Haskayne School of Business and the support of Mr. Jarislowsky to supplement leadership experience with the theory in the MBA program. I believe that an education equips you with the tools, but experience is hugely beneficial. Our panelists were of extremely high caliber, and I believe that the opportunity to engage these leaders was not only beneficial but inspirational as well.

What were some of your key takeaways from your time as a Jarislowsky co-fellow? What was the highlight of this journey? We have incredibly smart and engaging MBA students who are our future leaders. I am very proud of our Haskayne MBA’s and EMBA’s and it was great to get to know them over zoom and finally meet in person at my last event.

What is one piece of advice you have for students as they take on leadership roles? Be the person who you would want to work for.

Do you have any overall comments from your two-year term that you would like to share? Very much appreciate the opportunity to experience Haskayne School of Business leadership priorities and the openness to discuss topics that raise awareness about current issues and challenge the thinking of our MBA’s.