St. Mike’s Alum Works to Protect and Preserve Human Dignity

Alumna Elizabeth McIsaac (SMC 9T1) has some reassuring advice for university students concerned about the future: “Don’t expect to figure it all out right now.” ¶ Today, McIsaac is the President of Maytree, a Toronto-based foundation dedicated to examining the links between poverty and human rights in areas such as income security, housing, and access to education. Through education, research, and advocacy, McIsaac and her team work to highlight what happens when social systems do not keep pace with societal change. Maytree’s work is rooted in a philosophy that safeguarding economic and social rights is essential to creating a just and healthy society for all.

“Every human being has a right to dignity, to live free of poverty, which includes a fundamental human right to an adequate standard of living.”

Maytree and McIsaac take a multi-pronged approach to their change work. For example, Maytree hosts Five Good Ideas, a lunch-and-learn program where industry and issue experts share tips on managing non-profit organizations. It offers Maytree Policy School, a six-month program to support non-profit leaders and their organizations learn more about public policy. Other initiatives have included creating a discussion guide for community conversations on housing, and McIsaac and her colleagues regularly publish reports, briefs, and opinions to provide evidence for change and promote public discussion on policy issues.

McIsaac is passionate about effecting change, and her resume reveals a career rooted in the non-profit and advocacy sectors.

But when asked whether this was where she pictured for herself when she was an undergraduate, she describes her career path as “accidental” rather than carefully mapped out. Today’s role grew organically, she says, because she was drawn to the issues and the change she wanted to see.

And so, when she speaks with students today, McIsaac tells them to “do what makes you feel fulfilled. If you find your passion, opportunities will open up.”

While studying as an undergraduate, she was exposed to a wide range of social and political issues. Then, while working on an MA in Sociology in Education from the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, she had the opportunity to explore the importance of education in creating an equitable society. As a student she also gained volunteer experience at the Jesuit Centre for Social Faith and Justice, which was followed by contract work in refugee protection and also immigrant settlement. With each experience her vision was sharpened, and she “kept moving toward things that deeply interested me.”

In time, her professional resume included positions as Maytree’s Director of Policy and as the Executive Director of one of Maytree’s key ideas: the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC). She then went on to establish and lead Mowat NFP (Not-for-Profit Policy) at the Mowat Centre, conducting and directing research to analyze the challenges facing the non-profit sector today.

In 2014, she returned to Maytree as President, her experiences having emphasized for her that a healthy society grows from the position that every person deserves dignity and must have access to fundamental human rights such as housing, education, and an adequate standard of living.

It’s an ambitious goal, she acknowledges, and there is much work to be done in order to achieve it.

For Maytree this means working to advance social and economic rights in Canada by working to change the collective decisions we make as a society that create poverty. Public policy is an important lever for making this change happen, and two of the key areas of that have emerged for Maytree are housing and income security. For McIsaac, these are the social protections that provide the foundation for dignity and opportunity in people’s lives.

Increasingly, Maytree is also exploring other areas where it sees poverty being created. Clearly, there are many more dimensions that are connected. Maytree is supporting work around employment rights, education as a human right, and food security.

Most recently, it’s been exploring how experiences with the criminal justice system create and are created by poverty.

Of course, the challenge in all of this is finding the meaningful levers for change. McIsaac says, “we have also devoted significant attention to how we do the work — what does a human rights-based approach mean for a foundation and what does it look like?”

McIsaac believes that it is critical for people to be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives — this is core to her understanding of a human rights approach. In practice, this means being able to build relationships, organize, and advocate for change. In some cases, this looks like supporting residents to organize around issues with their landlords or to advocate for better public transit. In other cases, it can mean supporting networks of civil society organizations and people with lived experience to work together to make change happen.

And that’s where St. Mike’s and other post-secondary institutions can play a role, she argues. While U of T is a very large place, it offers a meeting place where smaller communities can come together and exchange ideas. And as a university in the middle of Canada’s largest and most diverse city, the opportunities for engaging in social change are exciting and unlimited.

Culture can be a powerful force in the educational experience, McIsaac says, making it important for St. Mike’s to provide students with ways to find sources of support and inclusion, finding common ground and empathy in a place rich in resources.

She also notes that, as St. Mike’s becomes more diverse, with an increasing number of students from around the globe, the exposure to different cultures and ways of thinking can only benefit the student community. When you have a better sense of who your neighbours are and what challenges they face, you are more likely to respond with respect and understanding.

And so, while students needn’t graduate knowing exactly how their career path will play out, McIsaac suggests, you may want to start to connect to work or volunteer opportunities in areas you are interested in — because such exposure can be a great guide.

“I gravitated to the thing I want to get up in the morning for. Look for work that makes a difference.”