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Gratitudes: these are a few of my favourite things, 2022 Edition

I’ve taken a moment to reflect on the culture, leadership and connections in 2022 that I am most grateful for and have experienced in 2022. This is a good palette cleanser to the previous article on Post-Pandemic Blues: Life is short, this condition is temporary. Thank you folks.

Music

Art

Podcasts

Watching

We live in a remarkable time, when series television is almost better than films.

Books

As an English and History graduate, I am consequently a very slow reader.

Education

This year, I was lucky enough to take a Leadership Development Program offered by CUCCIO and led by Bob Cook and Gayleen Gray who myself and Tracy Evans from UFV interviewed about Emotional Intelligence: they both deserve and entry under Leadership as well. Thank you to Tracy for being a great peer to work with. Shoutout to Lori MacMullen who supported this as the Executive Director and who retired this year.

Leadership

It’s worth pointing to people who are continuing to inspire us.

  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy  
  • Greta Thunberg
  • Frances Haugen: I’ll agree with Time here. But I think David Carroll has been out there consistently raising alarms about the same issues.
  • In the tech world, Tim Cook and team are still amazing, and with some minor reservations, Shantanu Narayen at Adobe and Satya Nadella at Microsoft are two leaders who continue to inspire. Gratitude to the 1Password team for their great product (made in Toronto).
  • Justin Trudeau and the team deserve a lot of credit for making good decisions during the pandemic. Again, I hope the Grits keep focused on the stuff that matters most to Canadians and learn from their expensive flops.
  • The hard working doctors, nurses, support staff, public health officials and epidemiologists keeping everyone healthy.

Friends, Colleagues, Loved ones

Thank you to everyone who listened, brought joy and I learned from this year.

  • Greg, Lisa and Paul of Away Forward.
  • Greg, Chad, Marco of Please the Ponies.
  • Dave, Jonny, Minesh and the music community in Toronto.
  • The delightful and thoughtful Sunny Kerr.
  • My peers from my Goldsmiths MA Class of 2003: this year marks 20 years since graduation.
  • The eLearning folks with OUCEL: our Friday lunch chats. 
  • My colleagues with Adobe and the Adobe Education Leader community.
  • The IT Team at OCAD U, my boss Alastair, the managers, my staff, my colleagues in the Faculty Curriculum Development Centre, and all the colleagues I work with at OCAD U. You make working fun and interesting.
  • My parents who manage to continue thriving despite their individual challenges.
  • Stella, who was co-valedictorian at middle-school and is slaying and serving at an arts-focused high school.
  • Of course, Sabina.