Future alumni award winner focused on community building in Haida Gwaii

Online learning allows Alissa MacMullin to support her family and her community while pursuing higher education

It’s a Friday afternoon in July, and Alissa MacMullin is solving a problem that’s completely unfamiliar to most people living in busy urban centres.  

As a recreation coordinator on Haida Gwaii, a remote island group off British Columbia’s northern coast, she needs hot dog buns to feed a group of hungry kids involved in one of the many activities she helps provide on the islands.  

“Our freight comes in on a Monday, and it’s a very small town. We found the buns, two grocery stores later,” she said. “So, a lot of it is just figuring it out day by day.”  

MacMullin’s commitment to her community, bolstered by what she’s learning in AU’s Master of Business Administration program, have earned her the 2025 Future Alumni Award. This award recognizes the leadership, service, and potential of a current AU student who has demonstrated academic excellence and substantial contributions to their community.  

And it is this commitment to her community that made AU’s online program, which provides access and educational opportunities to students anywhere in the world, the right fit when she was looking to earn a master’s degree.  

She had left the islands for education in the past—first a bachelor’s degree at University of British Columbia (UNBC) in Prince George, and then a master’s at University of British Columbia (UBC). 

But MacMullin said at this point in her life, she wanted to stay in the community with her friends and family, including a quadriplegic partner who needs her support.  

“This program allowed me to stay on Haida Gwaii, do the program eight weeks on, two weeks off, care for my partner, contribute to my community, and still feel like I’m getting a quality education.”

Lifelong inspiration to give back to her community  

MacMullin’s passion for education and her community—and using education to give back to her remote community—were instilled in her from an early age because she saw others leading by example.  

All the recreation opportunities she enjoyed as a child were provided by volunteers, including the soccer league she started with in Grade 2.  

“There were a lot of parents who volunteered to make that league happen, and now a lot of us are still involved, volunteering as coaches,” she said. “It was really about bringing kids together all across the island.”  

While she was inspired by that sense of volunteerism and community involvement from an early age, MacMullin recalls one elective high school class called Community Action that had a huge impact.  

“That was really formative for me,” she said. “It was about educating your community and volunteering,” she said.  

But even in the non-elective classes, she recalls teachers being creative and finding ways to get the kids out into the community, volunteering, and contributing. The influence from teachers, her mother who was an education assistant running homework help for local youth, and even other volunteers in the community, continue to inspire her. 

MacMullin recalls working with Kris Olsen as a youth; he ran a teen centre in Daajing Giids that she and other youth in the village regularly attended. They loved the space so much they would volunteer to clean and help maintain the old building where the centre was located. Olsen went on to become mayor of the village and he continues to serve the community.  

“I would say he was a big inspiration to a lot of us young people about coming back to your community,” she said. “I still volunteer with him. He was mentor then and is a colleague today.”  

In that sense she has come full circle. Thanks in part to his impact, she tries to inspire the youth she now works with to have that same community-minded attitude.

This program allowed me to stay on Haida Gwaii, do the program eight weeks on, two weeks off, care for my partner, contribute to my community, and still feel like I’m getting a quality education.

Alissa MacMullin, 2025 Future Alumni Award winner

Leaving her home community to pursue education  

When it was time for MacMullin to go to university, she had a long-term plan of going into medicine. She enrolled in a biomedical studies program at UNBC on a scholarship. 

But going through the program, she came to realize that working in a clinical setting was not something she was really interested in. An academic advisor suggested she write an undergraduate thesis, so she did, focusing on how recreational opportunities in rural communities are influenced by industry.   

“I think that set a trajectory of not pursuing medicine, and more going into research,” she said.  

The connection between recreation and public health was something MacMullin wanted to pursue, but she also wanted to be able to spend more time on Haida Gwaii.  

She enrolled in the master of public health program at UBC, which had a “distributed learning” model that allowed her to study from her home and travel to Vancouver, B.C., for three days each month for in-person learning.  

“That was my first sense that I could live at home and still study,” she said. “My biggest fight was always to be able to live on Haida Gwaii and also get an education.”  

When MacMullin returned to Haida Gwaii, she wanted to work with doctors in the community doing research. She started work on a master of science degree at UBC to facilitate that but didn’t feel passion for that kind of work.

Working and supporting family in a remote community  

Meanwhile, MacMullin was putting her knowledge and passion for public health and recreation to good use in her recreation coordinator role—describing it as “coming full circle.”  

“I think it’s just about being able to give that mentorship opportunity to kids, the same way I had,” she said. “It’s really nice to see them come into their own leadership abilities, too.”  

After a few years, she realized a master of science wasn’t setting her on a path she was excited about. She wanted to continue to support her community and meet recreational needs. Inspired by a new CEO at BC Recreation and Parks Association, who had a background in both public health and business, she started thinking about pursuing an MBA. Given she wasn’t willing to leave her home community, she said AU’s Master of Business Administration was a perfect fit.  

What’s more, she could immediately apply what she was learning in courses to her job, fulfilling her goal of improving her ability to support her community through her work. She said it has been especially valuable to be able to start to quantify some of the benefits of her work—something she said is incredibly important in building a sustainable and collaborative not-for-profit approach.  

“I think the MBA is giving me the tools to be able to measure social value and create the narratives and stories,” she said. “You can’t make change happen without having a really strong story. In business you have to have your 30-second pitch.” 

Preparing for whatever the future brings  

MacMullin said she is not looking at her MBA as something that will provide a return on investment in the financial sense—rather she sees this degree as a way to bring greater value and greater opportunities to her remote community.  

“It’s just bolstering our team, learning how to operate better together, building a stronger legacy of what Haida Gwaii Recreation is.”  

And with governance changes happening in the community, in relation to the Haida Title Agreement between the Government of British Columbia and the Haida Nation, MacMullin said she’s excited about navigating the changes to her job in the next few years, and how greater collaboration between local communities and the Haida Nation can improve outcomes for everyone on the islands.  

“I really want to come from a perspective that we’re emerging into this new landscape, and I’m really eager to see how that changes what I do,” she said. “Moving forward, understanding where my place is, is something I’m developing as a settler.”  

Throughout her educational journey, MacMullin has been grateful for the ongoing financial support of the Gwaii Trust Society, which support education for all Haida Gwaii residents. As for further education, after having spent most of her adult life taking one post-secondary program or another, she’s looking forward to a well-earned break once she finished her AU degree—even if she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of returning at some point down the road.  

But if she does pursue further education, she’ll remain firmly rooted in Haida Gwaii: “The best part is this really does feel like home.”

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