Ashley Dion - Changemaker Profile

Ashley Dion (she/her) is a Cree-Métis woman and a Mount Royal alumni and staff member. She graduated from MRU with a Bachelor of Business Administration and is the current Lead for Systems Learning at the Institute for Community Prosperity. In this profile, she shares her journey as a student at MRU where she discovered her passion for social innovation. She highlights her involvement in the Map the System competition as a competitor which led to her current role and creating the Banff Systems Summit in 2024. She also discusses the challenges and transformative impact of critiquing the non-profit sector and her ongoing commitment to inspiring and empowering others through her work and volunteer activities.

 

 

 Could you tell me about yourself?

Once I graduated high school, I took four years off. I spent that time living in London, England and Sydney, Australia. Afterwards, I came back to Calgary to start schooling here at Mount Royal University. I didn't even really know what I wanted to do in university, so I took some of the university entrance options. From that, I enrolled in an Introduction to Social Innovation course and fell in love with it. [I knew from that] I wanted to go into business with a concentration in social innovation.

I love volunteering and inspiring people, those are really important things to me. There became this natural connection between myself and Map the System. I met James Stauch [Executive Director, ICP], and he said, “you need to do Map the System.” MRU helped form the [Map the System] team that I was on, which was a really unique experience. We went into the competition as students that care about systems and issues, and decided to work together and figure it out, versus, having established friendships. [Our team] did very well and we went to the global competition. That experience led into my work with the Changemakers Studio and the Nonprofit Resilience Lab. From there, I jumped over to Map the System Canada, which has been really fun. As there was no global final this year, we also decided to create the Banff Systems Summit.

 

 

What big, beautiful question drives your work?

I don't feel like I have a question, but I feel I have a strong drive to help people to reach their potential. That's one of the things that I get to do through Map the System. I get to watch students grow and see them at conferences being able to use their voice and talk about something that they had no idea that they even were capable of. That to me, is super exciting.

 

How do you embody changemaking in your work?

For me, it’s really about sitting and listening to people's stories - to understand what they're struggling with and trying to give them tools to help them. In my role, I meet with students, generally across Canada, and when I talk to them they sometimes say to me “I don't even know what to do for a [Map the System] topic.” And I offer them tools to help them narrow that down and [focus in on the topic]. Ultimately, I feel like a funnel, helping people become changemakers themselves. Many of our students that go through Map the System have never done systems thinking. So it’s a significant mind-shift for them to go through this experience, and it really changes how they see the world and how they view themselves.

 

How do you see changemaking happening at MRU?

There are so many projects that are community-based through Mount Royal. To me, it’s so important in education that you can meet and go out into the community. That's one of the big aspects of changemaking. For you to make change, it's not just coming through a textbook, it's about interacting with people and getting to know the lived experience.

In terms of programs, Mount Royal has both Map the System and the Catamount Fellowship. The Changemakers Studio brings in that changemaking lens. [MRU] also has a concentration in social innovation, which really starts to shift a lot of students' mindset. Even if they only take one social innovation course, it builds that mindset for everyone to be a changemaker. Ultimately, Mount Royal is a very unique university, because we have smaller class sizes and you can build more of a relationship with a professor and with your classmates.

 

Has there been a defining changemaking moment for you at MRU?

The whole experience at Mount Royal has been very transformational. I don't think I'd be who I am today without having been a student and staff member at Mount Royal University. A very proud moment for me was bringing the Canadian final to Mount Royal for Map the System Canada. [For the final] we had 20 institutions from across Canada coming and checking out Mount Royal.