OKANAGAN Two prominent First Nations leaders have been reelected to their positions as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Okanagan College Board of Governors.
Chris Derickson, a councillor with the Westbank First Nation and a five-year veteran of the Board, was elected at the Board’s January meeting as chair. Gloria Morgan, a former Chief of the Splatsin Indian Band and an Enderby resident, was elected as vice chair.
Derickson is a partner in Alderhill Planning Inc., which works with government and First Nations communities and lectures at the Simon Fraser University Beedie School of Business and is on faculty with the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona. He has served on the Westbank First Nation Council since 2012. He was named one of Business in Vancouver’s Top 40 under 40 individuals in 2017.
Morgan was a Chief of the Splatsin Indian Band from 2001 to 2005 and has been an RCMP officer, a general practice lawyer as well as a Crown Prosecutor. She was the President of the Enderby and District Chamber of Commerce, and member of the RCMP’s E Division Aboriginal Advisory Committee, and served on the board of the Provincial Community Co-ordination for Women’s Safety. In November, she was appointed to the board of the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust (SIDIT).
Morgan has been on the Board of Governors since 2016.
She was the recipient of the Community Leader Awards – Community Builder award 2016, North Okanagan.
Other members of the Okanagan College Board of Governors are Shelley Cook, Juliette Cunningham, Blake Edwards, Charity Gerbrandt, Tina Lee, Robert McGowan, Christopher Newitt, David Porteous, Devin Rubadeau, Shakti Shekhar Singh and Okanagan College President Jim Hamilton.
