Roberta Hewson

National Director, Aboriginal Workplace Inclusion

Roberta Hewson, a Métis woman raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, brings a high level of expertise to her role as our key workplace inclusion specialist, trainer and developer of our online Inclusion Classroom. As an educator, executive director and business consultant, Roberta brings an amazing array of experience to her position as our national director, Aboriginal workplace inclusion.

As the former executive director for Partners for Careers (job placement service for Aboriginal graduates in Manitoba), project manager, CareerPlace (national employment initiative of the Native Women’s Association of Canada), and long-term member of our board of directors, where she served as treasurer, she knows Aboriginal employment issues and she understands what our employer and candidate need to advance inclusion.

Ms. Hewson will draw from her experience and her work as a consultant to deliver great value to our Leadership Circle partners and clients by helping them climb our Inclusion Continuum. Prior to her work with government, Roberta worked with organizations such as the Women in Trades and Technology National Network to help them develop their Employment Equity and Retention programs and SaskPower, develop the Employment Systems Review. This type of experience will serve our partners well.

In Winnipeg, Roberta maintained The Partner@510 Selkirk Information Centre, which serves as a single window to the wealth of services and programs available to Manitoba residents of the inner-city. Her office was also responsible for development of the very successful Guide to Winnipeg for Aboriginal Newcomers – a handy pocket sized guide to vital services for those transitioning to the city. She also managed the development of the Aboriginal Youth Mean Business! website – a directory of services to help Aboriginal youth start or grow a business.

After three years of study at the University of Manitoba, she opened her own retail business and spent many years thereafter as project manager for a business development company in Toronto. She later moved to Halifax and lived and worked there for four years as a manager with ITT Corporate Sheraton. In order to use her training as a teacher, she moved to the Caribbean and there, and later in Greece, worked as a teacher for several years.

Returning to Winnipeg in 1996, she focused her work primarily on Aboriginal employment issues. She served as Treasurer of the Board of Literacy Partners of Manitoba and worked as an Employment Development Program Coordinator with Employment Projects for Women. She began work as Corporate Relations Coordinator for CareerPlace for the Native Women’s Association of Canada and in October of 1997, moved to Ottawa to become the Project Manager for that program. Working with hundreds of Canadian companies and a vast network of Aboriginal employment initiatives, CareerPlace positioned itself to become a respected recruiting service and a resource on a wide variety of issues as they relate to the full and fair participation of Aboriginal women in Canada’s workforce.

She has dedicated her efforts towards ensuring the full and fair participation of Aboriginal people in the economy and workforce and because of a personal commitment to increasing Aboriginal participation in entrepreneurship, has worked extensively with business-related programs and with employers dedicated to Aboriginal inclusion.

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