Alison Loat

Alison is the co-founder and executive director of Samara, an organization dedicated to the idea that public service and public leadership matter.  Samara encourages this with projects that strengthen three areas: political leadership; the connection of citizens, both to each other and to public ideas; and the media's contribution to public affairs.  She is also an associate fellow at the School of Public Policy and Governance and an instructor at the Rotman School of Management, both at the University of Toronto.

Prior to this, Alison was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company.  During nearly five years with the firm, she developed strategies for Canadian and global organizations, with a strong focus on health care and financial services organizations.  She is also the founder and was the first executive director of Canada25, a non-partisan organization that involved Canadians under 35 in the development of public policy.  At Canada25, she created a national organization with chapters across Canada and the U.S., built partnerships with leading Canadian companies and government agencies and led several policy research projects, including one that was used by two federal ministries to develop Canada's Innovation Strategy.

Alison also has worked for the Governments of Canada and Ontario and for the Medical and Related Sciences (MaRS) Discovery District in Toronto.  She volunteers for the Canadian Opera Company and the Canadian Journalism Foundation and serves on the Boards of the Canadian Club of Toronto, The Public Good Initiative at the U of T School of Public Policy and Governance and the Impact Consulting Group at the Rotman School.

For her public service work, Alison was chosen as one of Canada's Top 25 under 30 by Maclean's magazine and received the Public Policy Forum's Youth Leaders Award and the Queen's Jubilee Gold Medal for her service to Canada.  She is a political studies graduate from Queen's (BAH 1999) and has a graduate degree from Harvard University (MPP 2004), where she was the recipient of the Marty Memorial Scholarship, the Certificate of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching and the Ellen Raphael Award for overall contribution by a graduating student.