Description

The Office of Indigenous, Local & Global Health in the Cumming School of Medicine invites applications for a Senior Research & Strategy Specialist. This Full-time Fixed Term position is for approximately 2 years (based on length of grant funding), with the possibility of extension.

Reporting to the Inclusive Governance Lead, the Senior Research and Strategy Specialist works independently and exercises considerable judgment in determining appropriate approaches to complex organizational issues, while ensuring alignment with University priorities, institutional commitments, policies and relevant external considerations. The Specialist serves as a key resource and subject matter expert on inclusive governance and related institutional change processes. The position advises leaders and stakeholders, develops strategic recommendations, directs projects and working groups, and establishes frameworks, processes and practices that support sustainable and effective governance.

Occasional evening and weekend work and limited travel may be required to accommodate community partners, stakeholder availability and engagement activities.

Summary of Key Responsibilities (job functions include but are not limited to):

Governance strategy and institutional architecture:

• Leads design of CSM's inclusive-governance strategy and multi-year architecture, co-design and co-implementation with internal and external communities of complex governance models across multiple CSM portfolios; interprets institutional challenges and negotiates adoption of new structures, processes, or services.

Executive decision support and policy advice:

• Serves as the local expert adviser to the Director of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships on decision legitimacy, community representation, pluralism, consensus-based decision-making, conflict navigation, and long-horizon stewardship; frames options, risks, trade-offs, and implementation conditions and negotiates support. Anticipates objections and shapes major institutional choices.

Community and civil-society governance relationships:

• Co-designs and sustains shared-authority and parallel-paths governance with Indigenous leaders, community and civil-society partners; negotiates durable roles, safeguards, accountability, and routes for influence in CSM decisions.

Deliberation, consensus, and conflict navigation:

• Sets CSM inclusive governance standards for deliberation and consensus-based decision-making, community priority setting and responsiveness; advises on contentious matters, designs high-stakes processes, protects principled dissent, stewards healthy conflict and strong relationships with Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and ensures authority and follow-through are explicit.

Portfolio, program, and implementation leadership:

• Leads a multi-year portfolio of notable-risk governance initiatives; develops execution strategy, sets priorities, directs resources within mandate, manages cross-unit, cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary, and transcultural interdependencies and risk, and is accountable for adoption and institutional outcomes.

Research, evaluation, and governance intelligence:

• Sets the governance research, co-design, co-implementation, and evaluation agenda; directs program theory, comparative analysis, evidence syntheses, environmental scans, and mixed-method/realist evaluation; oversees interpretation, translation, and dissemination of findings to reshape strategy, standards, resource allocation, and implementation to improve outcomes and processes.

Policy, protocols, and institutional standards:

• Anticipates policy, regulatory, ethical, and reputational issues; establishes faculty governance policies, protocols, standards, and assurance mechanisms aligned with current and emerging needs.

Strategic partnerships, grants, and resource development:

• Develops and leads cross-organizational proposals and partnerships with moderate risk and resource complexity; negotiates scope, roles, and delivery. Defines partnership and funding strategy; negotiates governance, resources, accountability, and multi-institutional execution. Builds senior relationships with funders, governments, universities, health systems, and civil society;

Public policy and knowledge mobilization

• Sets and directs a local, national, and international knowledge-mobilization agenda; communicates lessons internally through toolkits, standards and operation procedures; converts CSM learning into policy articles, policy briefs, institutional playbooks, scholarly outputs, public convenings, and scalable tools; persuades senior internal and external audiences.

Monitoring, accountability, and continuous improvement:

• Designs and leads assessment and evaluation strategy. Co-develops monitoring and assessment frameworks to assess quality of relationships, healthy disagreement, and future-readiness, including logic models, data collection strategies, joint interpretation and sense-making, back casting and planning. Develops and executes communications and reporting strategies and products.

Capability building, education, training, and mentorship:

• Co-designs curriculum, training, and enduring capacity building strategy, materials, and resources; provides full managerial responsibility for research assistants, AUPE casual employees, students and trainees, including recruitment, onboarding, work assignment, performance management, coaching, and employee development.

Foresight, future generations, and long-horizon stewardship:

• Embeds future-generations and public-value lenses into major CSM decisions; advises the Director of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships and senior leaders, convenes youth/community/Indigenous knowledge, stress-tests proposals, documents intergenerational trade-offs, and shapes strategy and resource choices.

Qualifications / Requirements:

• Masters degree in public policy, governance, organizational design, health policy, political science, Indigenous governance, conflict resolution, systems design, or a related field; equivalent combinations may be considered
• Ten or more years of progressively senior experience leading complex governance, policy, partnership, organizational-design, or institutional-change portfolios in a research-intensive university, health system, government, or comparable public institution
• Ten or more years of experience in leading education initiatives in higher education and social science research
• Demonstrated authority in inclusive governance, Indigenous/community partnership, deliberative processes, institutional policy, facilitation, and evaluation
• Demonstrated experience advising senior executives, leading high-sensitivity processes, developing external partnerships, and securing or managing multi-partner resources
• Exceptional judgement, diplomacy, writing, facilitation, negotiation, and ability to work across disciplines, sectors, identities, and knowledge systems

Application Deadline: September 28, 2026

We would like to thank all applicants in advance for submitting their resumes. Please note, only those candidates chosen to continue on through the selection process will be contacted.

This position is classified in the Professional Career Band, Level 4 of the Management and Professional Staff Career Framework.

For a listing of all management and staff opportunities at the University of Calgary, view our Management and Staff Careers website .