August 3, 2021
The Faculty of Education congratulates Carleen Thomas, BEd’03, who will serve as the next Chancellor of Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU). She will be the first Indigenous person to hold this position at ECU. Ms. Thomas is currently the Special Projects Manager for the Treaty, Lands and Resources department at the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Prior to this position, she served eight two-year terms as an elected council member for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, in which she held the Community Development portfolio covering health and education.
Ms. Thomas, a UBC Bachelor of Education (secondary) alumna, previously worked for the North Vancouver and Burnaby school districts as a district resource teacher in Indigenous education. She has also sat on the Burnaby School District’s Aboriginal Advisory Committee and served as the Aboriginal Representative Chair in the Capilano University Senate. She currently sits on the Indigenous Advisory and Monitoring Committee, a federal advisory committee made up of 13 Indigenous and six senior federal representatives that provides advice to regulators and monitors the Trans Mountain Expansion project and existing pipeline.
