SHARON BLADY - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

From Beadwork to BTS (with a detour to the Health Minister’s Office)

I started as a feminist decolonization scholar, conducting research and publishing about Métis beadwork and history while teaching in Indigenous studies, social work, nursing, art history, and gender & women's studies.

I took an unexpected decade-long detour into elected office, where my academic experience enabled me to shape legislation, policy, and serve in two cabinet portfolios, including as Manitoba's Minister of Health.

I continue to draw from my academic background in my current consulting work and have returned to academic conferences and publishing through my two mental health and neurodivergence programs: Embrace Your Superpowers and Bulletproof To Stigma. Here I combine lived experience, evidence-based tools and empowering pop-culture and fandom perspectives to provide effective and engaging resources, and share the results and impact of these programs within a broader research context.

Academics, Legislation, and Policy Development

An academic background served me well in office and is something not found with the regularity we need to build strong democracies, public policy, and legislation.

While in office, I regularly utilized my academic skillsets, and the equity and inclusion framework that grounded my research.

As result, I achieved an unprecedented (and still unreplicated) accomplishment for a Canadian non-Cabinet Legislator: I worked across government departments, with disabilities community, domestic violence prevention organizations, law enforcement, military, and related stakeholders to craft two first-in-Canada laws:
● Bill 238, Service Animal Protection Act, 2009
● Bill 217, Residential Tenancies Amendment Act (Expanded Grounds for Early Termination), 2011

Both laws have been replicated in other Canadian provinces, and the Service Animal Legislation provided a foundation for the Justice for Animals in Service Act (Quanto’s Law), passed federally in 2015 and amending the Criminal Code.

I was promoted to Cabinet, holding two portfolios: Minister of Healthy Living & Seniors, and Minister of Health, where I provided direction and leadership for the Manitoba Health Department in a time of political crisis, simultaneously overseeing the complex budgetary, policy, and communications challenges of a $6B healthcare organization responsible for the public healthcare of 1.3 million people.

As Health Minister, I continued to draw on my academic, research and teaching experience.

It enabled me to successfully manage many difficult situations including the long-standing issue of systemic racism in the healthcare system. The Brian Sinclair Inquest Report was my first major political and policy challenge as Manitoba's Health Minister. The report was six years in the making and I'd been Minister for six weeks. It contained 60+ recommendations for healthcare reform to address systemic racism. I oversaw the creation and delivery of a plan that started delivering results in 90 days while respectfully engaging Indigenous leadership and community to ensure decolonization and reconciliation within the process and results.

Post-politics: Pop-culture, Healing, and Academic Return

After serving as Manitoba's Health Minister, I began offering my political expertise and academic skill sets as a consultant (sharonblady.ca). I also used this combined skill set and my own lived experience of mental health and neurodivergence to address gaps in mental health and neurodiversity education, training, and self-management resources by creating two signature programs: Embrace Your Superpowers and Bulletproof To Stigma. (www.speak-up.co)

My research has expanded to include areas such as peer support, psychology, global health policy, and fandom studies, informing my programs which I deliver internationally across diverse media platforms, including conference keynotes, peer-reviewed publications, and media interviews.

I am proud of all of my work and to have it come full circle, now as a Bangtan Scholar. In addition to recent work, I have included some articles from my early academic years.

I am enjoying the return to academic activities and welcome opportunities to collaborate, teach, present at conferences, and build academic affiliations.

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