Melinda Gogerly is a passionate advocate for reconciliation, equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice. Her varied career path demonstrates her commitment to addressing injustices, improving access, redressing imbalance, and actioning lasting and meaningful change. She believes in leading with her whole self, demonstrating vulnerability as a necessary and central component of leadership. She strives to create space for teams and clients to feel valued, safe, healthy, and happy. She believes that leading with heart and humanity creates connection, establishes trust, and empowers teams to take ownership of their work, leading to pride in their accomplishments and lasting commitment to the collective cause. 

Over the past 11 years, Melinda has held a number of leadership positions in human services organizations including Director of Residential Services for Brightisle - an organization delivering health and community care services, Executive Director for Aurelia - a reconciliation-focused organization working with Indigenous communities to build internal capacity for the delivery of human services, and Director of Quality and Administration for Blue sky - an agency providing trauma-informed residential care and support to in-care children and youth. In all three organizations, Melinda has guided the process of identifying strengths and needs, designing and leading the associated strategic planning and change management processes. 

As a founding member of Team Aurelia, Melinda shaped the organization to become a values-based,  collaborative team of allies in action, building and maintaining strong and trusting relationships as the primary root. Through immersive learning, Melinda translated the Labrador Innu communities’ vision into language and formats that spoke to federal funders culminating in a proposal and project plan that secured multi-year, multi-million dollar funding for unprecedented on-reserve capacity development work. However, her favourite part of this powerful work was the development and delivery of training, coaching, and mentoring in community and the two-way learning that has resulted. She continues to project manage, mentor, and deliver strategic guidance and training to this day. 

Melinda has extensive project management experience and has supported the creation of three non-profit organizations from scratch, including the creation of Bylaws, policies, procedures, and the roles and responsibilities of the Board of Directors. In all leadership positions, Melinda has been responsible for strategic, operational, and financial planning and reporting, while maintaining consistent and high-quality service delivery to vulnerable populations. Her freelance work has served clients seeking advocacy and change within larger institutions such as increasing diversity in the UK arts sector, and equal gender representation in UK arts funding, and most recently she has worked with Violence Prevention Labrador to conduct a community needs assessment of carers throughout Labrador that will inform the future strategic direction of the organization. 

As a co-survivor of Sudden Cardiac Arrest and an advocate and caregiver over a lengthy recovery period, Melinda understands that to expect humans to separate their personal experiences from their professional selves is unrealistic and inhumane. She is actively working to interrupt outdated management methods and to draw attention to the fact that healing has no predetermined timeline. She is also at the beginning of a journey to create navigation, support, and connections for those who are experiencing critical care situations while attempting to grapple with the many barriers presented by the healthcare system.

A passionate proponent of  ‘nothing about you without you’, she continues to advocate for keeping the voices and needs of all individuals served at the forefront of organizational planning and at the centre of every decision made.