Solving Problems at the Source

When Kelli Stevens decided to pursue her Master of Social Work at the University of Calgary, she wasn’t looking to sit across from clients in a counselling session. Instead, she was drawn to the bigger picture, the systems, policies and root causes that shape people’s lives. That’s why she chose the International and Community Development (ICD) stream.

“I’ve always had a bias, or maybe it’s a preference, for solving challenges at the root cause,” she reflects. “If you help one person or one family, but you don’t change the factors that put them in that tough spot to begin with, you might end up with hundreds more families in the same circumstances.”

For Kelli, that perspective made the ICD program a natural fit. Her professional path has been anything but typical. She started in corporate communications where she had to manage crisis responses that included support for people in countries affected by war. Those experiences pushed her to think about changing careers and pursuing international social work. 

“After entering the ICD program and starting a job with several racialized peers and colleagues, I started to change my mind,” she says. “I started thinking differently about power, privilege and the limits of ‘helping’. It was humbling. I realized that if it’s hard to collaborate equitably here in Canada, how much harder, and more problematic, might it be to show up in someone else’s country where you might be positioned as a ‘saviour’? By the end of the degree, I decided I didn’t want the ‘I’ – the international part of ICD – as much as I wanted the ‘C’ the community development part.” 

Many ways to apply her MSW in the real world

That insight has grounded her career ever since. During her MSW, Kelli managed a major collective impact project, the Identity-Based Wraparound Intervention, which brought together more than two dozen organizations, from police and school boards, to counselling and newcomer-serving agencies, all focused on supporting youth who were at risk of joining youth gangs. 

For Kelli, it became a living laboratory for applying community development in practice.

“It felt like a master class in collaboration,” she says. “Getting everyone from different professions and different agencies to work together meant learning conflict management, facilitation, and how to recognize each other’s strengths. It was social work, just at a different scale. Instead of helping one person at a time, we were helping many through the systems that shaped them.” 

That “macro” mindset carried into the next chapter of her life which she spent with a national charitable foundation that distributed $20 – 25 million annually to various causes, while taking an approach that community members already had the knowledge and skills to do what was best for themselves. 

“Our job was to provide the resources people needed to do the work they were passionate about. It was perfectly aligned with what I learned in the MSW program.” “Our job was to get out of their way and provide the resources they needed. It was perfectly aligned with what I learned in the MSW program.” 

A degree that provides the skills desperately needed for a divided world

Today, she’s applying that same approach at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, where she helps future business leaders see how their skills from a variety of backgrounds including marketing, HR and accounting, can strengthen non-profits and community organizations. It’s the kind of cross-sector bridge-building she believes the world desperately needs.

“The challenges of the 21st century – climate change, polarization, poverty, and geopolitical conflict can’t be solved by one sector alone,” she says. “If you can be the person who brings people together from different backgrounds to find solutions, you can be part of the biggest changes we need. ICD helps you become that kind of person.” 

It’s a perspective Stevens also brings to her students now that she teaches community development courses as a sessional instructor. For Kelli, the heart of social work is relational–whether between individuals, or across organizations and systems.

“Every project, every classroom, every meeting is a chance to practice social work skills,” she says. “You’re always trying to understand people’s strengths, give feedback that creates positive change, and motivate others toward a shared goal. ICD gives you the tools to do that at scale.”

Looking back, Kellis says she really wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps the part where she tried to balance full-time work with grad school! But she laughs about that now.

“I would definitely do it again,” she says. “ICD gave me the lens I needed to see how everything connects: the systems, the people, the power. And it also taught me that real change happens when you can bring them all together.”