Marilyn Poitras

Marilyn is a Michif/Cree /Irish with a bit of Scottish thrown in for good measure, hailing from the southeast corner of the Qu’Appelle valley on the prairies. She is a religious follower of design thinking and belongs to the tribe of positive deviants. Marilyn is also a passionate student of natural law and traditional knowledge systems. She loves ensuring a good helping of Indigenous knowledge is added to our conversations, thinking and systems. She is also a daughter, mother, sister, partner, grandma and auntie and friend who can do a mean jig if pushed or a good tune is played!

Professional education for Marilyn, comes through Harvard Law School where she obtained her L.L.M. (Class of ’95) and the University of Saskatchewan College of Law where she earned an L.L.B (class of ’94). She has also taken careful note of Murphy’s law and has researched and studied all kinds of alternative therapies, design thinking, architectural design, mental health and meditation.

In her career, Marilyn has been a court worker, a constitutional lawyer, a law professor, a negotiator, a community developer, a commissioner, a film producer and an editor. She is a Design Thinker. Today she brings all of those experiences into her new management consulting in MPoitras Ethics, Law and Design company to assemble teams to sort through monster problems and find traction for new pathway, ideas, institutions and systems.

As the Principal Designer for the Metis Nation tribunal development, Marilyn assembled the team, meets with the client, community members, experts, technicians, traditional advisors, researchers and political leaders. Marilyn ensures there is webbing between the need identified, the practical data to be relied on and the crystallization of vision for the Tribunal.

As the developmental designer for the Metis Nation - Saskatchewan’s Tribunal Development initiative Marilyn will ensure the Design Team is diverse, has in-depth expertise and creatively engaged in the design process to create a unique, specific Métis system for the assessment of issues and the building of relationships, trust and responsibilities. Her secret sauce for listening and inclusion, facilitation of voice, intent and vision, will be part of her real work in the project.

Marilyn’s vision will include an approach that is complimentary of Canadian law and Metis history and traditional laws. Ensuring that research that is broad, local national and international as well as, diverse she will include lessons and wise practises from other systems that hold community relational values as their foundation. It means she plays a role in sense making and scaling, it means she will be editing and encouraging. It means reframing, ideas generating and acting as the conduit for community development. This design thinker is right at home in the shape shifting space and wants to invite you in.