Call 6 asks that existing board certification and director education programs in Canada be studied, reviewed, and amended to better serve Indigenous Peoples. Activity responsive to this Call exists but is uneven. The primary board certification program in Canada—the ICD-Rotman Directors Education Program (DEP), which leads to the ICD.D designation—has introduced a Diversity Scholarship that explicitly includes Indigenous Peoples as a priority group. Separately, Indigenous-led organizations have developed their own governance and leadership certification programs that are designed from the ground up around Indigenous needs, including AFOA Canada’s suite of professional designations and the Banff Centre’s Certificate of Indigenous Leadership, Governance, and Management Excellence.
However, there is limited evidence that mainstream board certification programs have been substantively reviewed or amended in their curriculum, pedagogy, or assessment methods to reflect Indigenous governance traditions, community-based decision-making models, or the specific challenges facing Indigenous board directors. The dominant approach has been to improve access to existing programs through scholarships and outreach, rather than to redesign the programs themselves. Academic literature in this area is largely contextual, focusing on the inadequacy of Western accounting and governance frameworks for Indigenous organizations rather than documenting specific program reform efforts.
