Get to know Mini U and Junior Bisons associate director Ashley Gagnon

During the second week of Mini U this summer, associate director Ashley Gagnon had numbers on her mind with 800 new campers that week alone and over 150 undergraduate student staff members, (not to mention the MBA corporate finance exam she’d just written).

Gagnon, associate director of Mini U and Junior Bisons at UM since 2020, is also pursuing an MBA from the Stu Clark Graduate School at the Asper School of Business.

As a leader, Gagnon strives to create spaces for campers and employees alike to experience the joy (and discomfort) of learning, a feeling she knows well from applying her background in dance, kinesiology, athletic therapy and physiotherapy to advanced study of leadership & organizations and marketing at the Asper School of Business.

Gagnon had never formally studied topics like accounting or finance, and she refers to these MBA classes as her most uncomfortable but most valuable.

“When I start classes that make me uncomfortable, like accounting and finance, I feel that’s life saying, well, you said you wanted to learn, and this is what learning feels like,” she says.

This discomfort, she notes, comes with growth, adding that balancing learning with development is a key goal at Mini U and Junior Bisons for both campers and staff.

“I’m passionate about creating a positive work environment where people can challenge themselves, find room for growth and come back each year to do something that challenges the new skill set that they’ve learned in school,” she says.

Gagnon’s favourite Mini U activities (like topple tubes) are those that most participants come into without any prior knowledge.

Campers learn by trying, by doing, by succeeding and by missing, she explains, noting that the undergraduate student employees are themselves participating in an experiential learning opportunity that supports their studies.

She is passionate about this mode of learning and has herself always learned best through experience.

A dancer from a young age, Gagnon pursued a dance program at the University of Calgary offered by the faculties of arts and kinesiology and fell in love with the study of anatomy.

Returning to Manitoba to study athletic therapy, she joined Mini U as a student supervisor—that same experiential workplace learning opportunity for kinesiology students that Mini U and Junior Bisons offers today.

She landed her dream job after her physio master’s degree, and while she loved the clinical setting, she felt something was missing, unnamable until a permanent opportunity at Mini U came up.

“I felt a calling to come back,” she says.

Gagnon got the job then and later applied for the associate director role, where she has since thrived. She reflects on what she now knows was missing from clinical work.

“I care about physical activity and finding ways to maintain health, wellness and independence that meet personal, individual goals. As a physiotherapist, I could have that impact one on one with clients or patients,” she says.

“In my current role, however, I get to lead a team working to create those positive experiences for thousands of people.”

This drive to make a broad impact, to support positive relationships to wellness and movement on a larger scale, inspired Gagnon to join the Asper MBA program.

“I’ve learned that I’m extremely passionate about leadership development. The vast majority of what I do at work is create systems for others to find success. So, I saw room for growth in running the business side of Mini U and developing my own leadership capacity further.”

Thanks to reassuring firsthand experience (her partner is an Asper MBA alum), Gagnon knew that the MBA offered what she was looking for, a certainty reaffirmed with each new challenge her role offers.

“I apply concepts from school every day at work,” she explains. “I also learn so much from my classmates as we work to apply concepts to our own unique experiences and to other industries.”

This summer, Gagnon navigated an unexpected road closure and choregraphed pick-up and drop-off traffic, tackled business cases in class that called on her and her peers’ collective insights, learned a whole lot more about finance, and continued her work advancing and fostering every camper’s and staff member’s leadership potential.

In other words, Gagnon did what Mini U campers do best: try, experience and learn.

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With one of the most flexible and adaptable programs in Canada, the Asper School of Business MBA program is designed to help students build their leadership skills in any field. Learn more about professional graduate programs at Asper here.

Emily Wilson