Susan Mide Kiss
Senior Director, Community Engagement
Susan Mide Kiss is the Senior Director, Community Engagement with the University Relations division at the University of Calgary (UCalgary). Prior to joining the University Relations team in 2011, Susan served a leadership role with a health research initiative in U Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. Susan joined the Aligning Institutions for Community Impact (AICI) Working Group in 2016.
Susan’s professional background spans two decades and includes a number of health charities and public sector organizations both in British Columbia and Alberta. Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Victoria, a graduate certificate from the American University (Washington D.C.) and a Master of Arts degree in Leadership from Royal Roads University.
As a leader of a dynamic team of community engagement professionals, Susan actively seeks out institutional partnership opportunities with community organizations, not-for-profits, government and other educational institutions. The team leverages and creates mutually beneficial relationships with community partners and aims to enhance the university’s role in the broader community.
In 2015, Susan researched a number of evaluation methods utilized throughout the United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and Canada to identify an approach to determine and assess the impact of potential and existing community engagement activity. Through this process, UCalgary’s community engagement team identified the REAP self-assessment model (based on four key principles of community engagement activity: reciprocity, externalities, access and partnership) as the most applicable approach to inform a community engagement evaluation tool. The resulting ‘Community Engagement Decision and Evaluation Matrix’ is an evaluation tool that informs and reports on activities led by the Community Engagement team. Consistent utilization of the matrix has resulted in a shift from low-moderate impact to a more consistent moderate-high impact of community engagement partnerships and programming.
An active volunteer, Susan served on the Board of Directors Youth Singers of Calgary from 2011 to 2018 and is a strong supporter of United Way, Calgary and Area. Susan has lived in Calgary for 16 years and is the mother of two busy teenagers.