Shelagh Savage

Shelagh Savage – Halifax, Nova Scotia

With a strong belief that transformative learning and equitable collaboration are essential elements for community change, Shelagh supports foundations, organizations and institutions committed to re-thinking approaches to leadership learning and partnership. 

As Associate Director (Partnerships) at the Coady International Institute (2009 - 2019), she was responsible for the strategic development of equitable partnerships, program planning and educational design. This involved collaboration across a spectrum of partners and program funders; support to Youth programming and Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL); as well as research, design & adult education. With a capacity-building focus on leadership for collaboration and community engagement, Shelagh designed and facilitated a range of educational courses on Re-thinking Partnership, as well as taught within Coady’s unique Asset-based, Citizen-led Development (ABCD) programs.  

This was preceded by 25 years of international cooperation with communities across the globe, including innovative international programming (Country Director, WUSC Sri Lanka), Volunteer Cooperation (Executive Director, VSO Canada), Peace-building (Deputy Director, PRET Sri Lanka) and numerous international management positions related to Youth leadership. 

Committed to supporting coalition building and collaboration in order to influence positive change, Shelagh has partnered with universities and civil society organizations in South Asia, South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean; as well as with governments and UN agencies such as ILO, UNOCHA and UNICEF. 

She has also been an active volunteer in Canadian networks through local community organizations and national board memberships. Recent involvement includes the Board of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC); the Advisory working group for Community Knowledge Exchange (CKX); the Global Affairs Canada Advisory group on civil society partnership and the steering committee for the Next-Generation Leadership: New Models for Canadian Collaboration (Academics/Practitioners). 

In addition to being Chair of the Royal Roads University School of Education and Technology (SET) Advisory Council, Shelagh is currently Treasurer of the board of the Atlantic Council for International Cooperation.

As a practitioner, her research, conference presentations and publications include work on Equitable & Multi-stakeholder Partnerships, Facilitating Transformative Leadership Learning as well as Community Participation and Conflict Management.