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Guest Name
Deanna Burgart
Guest Occupation
Indigenous Engineer - Speaker and Innovator
Guest Biography

Deanna Burgart is an experienced speaker, trainer, engineer and mentor that has a talent for identifying gaps and providing solutions to systemic, organizational and transformational change. Her firm, Indigenous Engineering Inclusion Inc, is committed to innovation and transformation with industries and Indigenous communities through industry and inclusion training and engineering consulting. Indigenous Engineering Inclusion Inc. is built on a strong foundation of mentoring and sustainability.

Deanna brings over 20 years of experience and education in oil, gas, renewables and pipelines and is passionate about global energy transitions and the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People. She helps STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focused organizations move forward in operationalizing Indigenous inclusion and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action. She has recently worked on an initiative as an instructor and subject matter expert to Indigenize curriculum through a pilot project with SAIT and Innotech Alberta, training 60 Indigenous students in Pipeline Monitoring. She has also worked with the National Energy Board assisting with their Indigenous Advisory Monitoring Committees.  

Her lived experience as a child expatriate in Singapore, First Nations adoptee and Indigenous youth mentor has developed her love for finding cross-cultural collaboration opportunities between youth, government, Indigenous communities and industries. She believes that cross mentoring and the fact that everyone we meet has something to teach and something to learn from us will create innovative opportunities for all to grow.
 

She is now the co-founder of IndigeSTEAM where she connects Indigenous STEM professionals with students and youth for co-mentoring and community. In 2008, she had her first opportunity to reach out to Indigenous youth. She was applying for a scholarship with the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation, an engineering scholarship for Aboriginal Women. A requirement of this scholarship was that she present to Indigenous high school youth on the theme of “An Engineers Duty to Society”. Her first presentation, Engineering our Water, was when she first coined the term “Indigeneer” in 2008. She spoke of the water crises in First Nations, and invited the youth to consider that by pursuing a career in engineering, they could be part of the solution. 
 

She was so inspired by that experience, she continued to speak to youth – and still does today. She was a mentor with the Association of Professional Engineering and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) Aboriginal mentoring program, a mentor with Indspire, Rivers to Success, a mentor with Power to Choose, a Aboriginal science camp.