Rachel Mason, MA

Rachel is the owner of Arrive Consulting (www.arriveconsulting.ca), and has worked on several projects with Roundtable. Rachel is Eastern-European Jewish on her mother’s side and British on her father’s side. Throughout her career, Rachel has worked to support cultural understanding between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in a variety of contexts. Her approach is grounded in a strong awareness of privilege, social justice, de-colonization and anti-racism. Rachel’s experience has uniquely prepared her to understand the challenges involved in delivering culturally-responsive services. She has worked for a variety of Indigenous organizations and for the provincial government, at Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation and then at Ministry of Health (Aboriginal Health).  The primary purpose of her work in government was to create a cultural shift in government to promote stronger engagement with Aboriginal organizations, particularly youth. Rachel also managed contracts with Aboriginal organizations and worked to adapt standard contract management practices to include more culturally-responsive service delivery. At Ministry of Health, Rachel supported staff from other departments to learn about Aboriginal peoples and work in more culturally respectful way. 

Rachel is a certified educator with a Masters Degree in Education. Rachel’s graduate research on the incorporation of Aboriginal content into the public education system helped her to understand the challenges involved in merging Indigenous ways of being with Western-structured systems and approaches.  This led her to develop a teacher-training program called “Teaching What You’re Not,” which helps non-Aboriginal teachers navigate the challenges involved in teaching Aboriginal content respectfully. Rachel also has a strong background in personalized, inquiry-based learning, and her curriculum development work reflects her belief that learning is more effective and engaging when it involves dialogue, self-development, and personalization. Rachel believes that working in a culturally-responsive way involves developing an understanding of history and context related to Indigenous people in Canada, building awareness of Indigenous worldviews and cultural practices, and changing both thinking and actions through personal and organizational development. Rachel is passionate about this work would be thrilled to contribute to an initiative that aims to support culturally-responsive service delivery within teams.