Beth Robertson

Background

About Beth Robertson

For over a decade, I have honed my expertise in Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) to advance innovation within several sectors, including Healthcare, Tech, Business, Finance, Higher Education and Government. Currently I am the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Specialist with the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group, one of Canada's foremost mental health care, teaching and research institutions. I am also a proud board member of CAPSA, as well as a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher for inpatient units at The Royal. In addition, I act as an independent EDI consultant for organisations and post-secondary institutions to support inclusive educational initiatives, while ensuring they meet current and emerging legal and regulatory requirements. From 2020 to 2022, I acted as a Senior Research Associate with the Conference Board of Canada (CBoC), contributing to the knowledge pillars of Inclusion, Human Capital, Education and Future Skills. Here I managed the Council on Inclusive Work Environments (CIWE) and later the Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Council (CRSC). Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow shared between the School of Industrial Design and History at Carleton University, as well as Program Director of "Gendered Design in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) for Low-and-Middle-Income-Countries (LMICs)". This was a $1.1 million program funded by the International Development Research Centre and facilitated through Carleton that aimed to foster mutual learning and capacity building between innovators in Canada and low and middle-income countries to apply gender analysis to design practice from a global perspective. I have also undertaken government contracts from Infrastructure Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada that all extended my experience, knowledge and networks. This included effective program development, implementation and evaluation, Gender Based Analysis Plus (GBA+), inclusion-informed infrastructure and technical development, accessibility in the financial and business sector, and much more. My professional service includes acting as the adjunct curator of Gender and Globalization with Ingenium: Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation. At the same time, I continue to be an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University and remain a member of Carleton University's Disability Research Group since October 2015 that is intended to contribute to both public and academic understandings of disability and design.