Before enrolling in the MPNL program, Brianna Salmon worked with a non-governmental organization (NGO) and finished a graduate thesis about sustainable transportation. She graduated from the MPNL program in 2014 and is now the Executive Director of Green Communities Canada, a national organization based in Peterborough. On the 10th anniversary of the MPNL program, she spoke with PANL Perspectives about what stood out for her in the program. (This interview has been shortened and edited.)
Q: Why were you interested in the MPNL program?
Salmon: I was interested in the opportunity to further develop my leadership skills and my knowledge as it related to the sector, and to better understand how I could create the kind of change I wanted to see within the Canadian NGO (non-governmental organization) landscape. I was particularly attracted to this program because of its practitioner-led approach and because of the reputation of the faculty involved. And I was excited about being involved in rich, small-group learning, and to be able to learn from folks who had been working in the sector much longer than I had.
Q: What are some of the benefits of the MPNL program?
Salmon: The program provided opportunities to engage with subject-matter experts, folks that were working in the field, and to be exposed to contemporary and relevant research and governance experts and financial experts — all these different areas of expertise pertained to the work I was doing and gave me a broad understanding of management and leadership within the sector.
Also, pragmatically, the program structure also allowed me to continue working full time throughout my degree. During the first year of the program, I was working in a middle-management position, and by the second year of the program, I’d been promoted to the executive director position of the organization I was working with at the time, so there was a lot of professional development happening for me.
And the condensed, in-person opportunity (the two-week Summer Institute) was such a beautiful and rich learning opportunity. My cohort (like most cohorts of this program) was full of brilliant and wonderful people, many of whom, a decade later, I’m still in regular communication with. They came to the program with diverse areas of interest, working in different capacities within the sector, and many of them had been working within the NGO sector for much longer than I had.
Q: How is the MPNL program relevant to people working in small, volunteer-dominated organizations?
Salmon: Most organizations in the sector, and certainly most of the organizations that our organization supports, are working in a resource-scarce environment, and they’re doing their best to address the intersecting challenges of a climate crisis in their communities — and to sustain their staff and support their development and expand their programming.
As an organization, Green Communities Canada has the chance to increase their capacity and to increase our shared potential for change. The strong understanding of the sector that I gained through the MPNL program has been enormously helpful, because every organization in our network has a constellation of unique factors that influence their work, but they also share a similar legal and governance model.
Q: How is the program relevant in terms of leadership skills in our sector?
Salmon: Legal and governance models in the volunteer-governed sector need supports, understanding and investment to function well. Most organizations are struggling to fund their programs, and the administrative and development capacity to be able to support good governance practices isn’t always there.
MPNL helped me to better understand how I could contribute to building the capacity of our sector. It’s enabled me to build connections with experts across the country. It provided me with evidence-informed resources, strategies and approaches to increase our impact, but also to promote justice within our work.
This, without a doubt, has elevated my work, the work of my organization, the network of organizations that we support, and I think that type of impact across the sector is one of the really magical things about the MPNL program.
It’s one of the only programs of its kind in the country, and I think it’s so important and so needed — and it does have the opportunity to benefit our sector broadly.
Brianna Salmon graduated from the MPNL program in 2014 and is the Executive Director of Green Communities Canada, a national organization based in Peterborough. Green Communities Canada is on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Photos are courtesy of Green Communities Canada.
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Sunday, January 8, 2023 in Alumni, News
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