{"id":14264,"date":"2026-04-20T15:41:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/?p=14264"},"modified":"2026-04-20T15:50:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T19:50:32","slug":"a-conversation-with-carletons-incoming-board-chair-christina-tessierleadership-innovation-and-impact-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/2026\/a-conversation-with-carletons-incoming-board-chair-christina-tessierleadership-innovation-and-impact-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with Carleton\u2019s Incoming Board Chair Christina Tessier:\n\nLeadership, Innovation, and Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n A Conversation with Carleton\u2019s Incoming Board Chair Christina Tessier:\n\nLeadership, Innovation, and Impact\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n
\"Christina<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The journey from leading Ingenium, Canada’s Museum of Science and Innovation, to chairing the Carleton University Board of Governors is defined by a consistent philosophy of service and stewardship. In this insightful interview, incoming Board Chair Christina Tessier shares her unique career path, drawing powerful parallels between leading major cultural institutions and governing a post-secondary university. Her leadership is anchored by a key guiding principle and a vision for Carleton that emphasizes long-term institutional health and authentic community impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christina\u2019s professional life was not a predetermined route. Her initial attraction was to history, specifically the storytelling aspect of history, and a curiosity about “how things work and are made”. This led her through different fields before she discovered what she calls “Museum School,” eventually landing her in a role with Ingenium, which sparked her passion for STEM and the understanding of how important that is in solving big global problems. She firmly believes this non-linear experience is a crucial piece of advice for students: “A career advice I could give to students is don’t expect everything as a straight line. You’re going to bump around and go backwards and down and back up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This perspective on personal journey is matched by her fundamental approach to professional interactions, governed by a piece of advice she received from a previous colleague: “You have to remember to be hard on the problem and soft on the person.” She emphasizes that this combination of accountability and empathy is really important to build workplaces where you can build trust and psychological safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leadership Defined as Stewardship:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In leadership, Christina sees her role through the lens of stewardship. For institutions that “will long outlive us,” her role, is a small part of the timeline. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“Our rule is to steward those organizations forward, and to really think about it, ‘steward’ means that we are trying to ensure the long-term health and viability of those organizations to serve the next generation.” This focus guides the board’s decision-making, ensuring that current actions, especially when facing financial challenges, are not short-sighted decisions that are just based on a bottom economic line. Instead, they must be focused on the long-term vision, asking, “What does that mean ten and\/or twenty years from now?”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The necessity for trusted and focused leadership was instilled in Christina during the intense three-year timeline to rebuild and reopen the Science and Technology Museum. The experience taught her the importance of making quick decisions with sufficient information, but most crucially, the need to trust her colleagues: “In that environment, you really have to trust each other. You have to be able to delegate confidently”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Innovation, Community, and Carleton\u2019s Mission:<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christina sees a strong connection between informal learning environments and formal education like Carleton, particularly in fostering innovation. She prefers to define innovation not as a “big aha moment” but as small incremental steps towards building something better; <\/p>\n\n\n

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“Your focus is to try and make something better, and the smallest steps built upon each other can really make a big impact, so it makes innovation feel accessible to folks that it’s not something just for other people, that you can be a change maker too…” This outlook aligns with what she finds exciting about Carleton: “it is so connected to community that the research is also connected to how it’s going to be used in community… that is going to have an impact beyond the university setting.” The university’s campaign of “here for good” really resonated with Christina, symbolizing a focus on work that is here to have a positive impact.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Good governance, she adds, supports this mission by having a board that understands its oversight role and has “the conviction to ask thoughtful and challenging questions”. This requires creating a safe space for constructive dialogue and good decision-making where all contributions are valued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Impact of Education and a Message to Students:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christina reflects on the tangible impact of higher education, one of them is convocation. “That moment when you could see all of that determination… All of the hard work was really meaningful.” She finds similar inspiration by reading the newspaper and seeing a Carleton researcher story come up: \u201cYou really see the real-world impact of the work that is happening that is impacting our community”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead five years, Christina\u2019s hope for Carleton is not a fundamental change but about being better known for the things that Carleton already excels at. Her ultimate hope for the entire Carleton community is cohesion. Recognizing that <\/p>\n\n\n

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“We’re living in a tough world,” she calls for a focus on human connection: “It takes mutual respect and empathy. We need to be able to look at each other and try to understand the other person’s point of view. We need to truly listen to each other”. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Finally, she shares her personal advice for students to view setbacks as “the learning opportunity” and to “lean into those learning opportunities to say yes to the challenges and things that maybe scare you a little bit and try them out”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The journey from leading Ingenium, Canada’s Museum of Science and Innovation, to chairing the Carleton University Board of Governors is defined by a consistent philosophy of service and stewardship. In this insightful interview, incoming Board Chair Christina Tessier shares her unique career path, drawing powerful parallels between leading major cultural institutions and governing a post-secondary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":442,"featured_media":14255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[38,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-news"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/442"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14264"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14269,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14264\/revisions\/14269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/boardofgovernors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}