Western Regional Group Council Representative

Kimberly Speers

Associate Teaching Professor and Graduate Advisor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

Bio

Dr. Kimberly Speers is currently an Associate Teaching Professor and Grad Advisor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. She teaches courses on public sector governance, strategic planning and implementation, public policy, communication and engagement, managing service delivery, BC politics, research methods, policy analysis, political parties, and food politics. In 2020, she received the Faculty of Human & Social Development Award for Teaching Excellence and Educational Leadership.

Kim is also the Chair of IPAC Victoria and the Secretary of the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA).

She has also taught with the national local government program at the University of Alberta and taught in the Evaluation Certificate program at the University of Fraser Valley.

Prior to her arrival in BC, Kim was an Assistant Professor and the Graduate Chair in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba. She received an Outstanding Faculty Award in 2009 at the University of Manitoba and in 2008, she received a President's Committee Community Outreach Award.

She completed her PhD in Political Science at the University of Alberta and has a MA in Public Administration from Carleton University, a Master of Arts in History from Queen’s University and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Waterloo.

Kim was also a management consultant with KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Praxis, and IMI Strategics in Alberta prior to moving to Manitoba. She has also worked as a government relations consultant and worked at the federal, provincial, and local levels of government. She also was the Director for Strategy and Policy with the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, Manager of Business Planning and Performance Measurement with Alberta Municipal Affairs and worked for a former Prime Minister to assist him with researching his memoirs.

She is a frequent media commentator at the national, provincial and local levels and many years ago, she was involved in partisan and student politics. She has been involved in campaign management at the local, provincial, and federal orders of politics.

Her research interests are performance measurement, accountability, communications, change management, project management, animal politics, and strategic planning in government.