Dr. Dionne Pohler is an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan Edwards School of Business. She also holds the Co-operative Retailing System Chair in Co-operative Governance with the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy and the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives and is a faculty research fellow with the Rotman Institute for Gender and the Economy. She previously served as the Acting Director and PhD Chair at the University of Toronto Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources and as the vice-chair of an independent taskforce responsible for making recommendations for the modernization of the federal Employment Equity Act.
Her previous and ongoing research covers topics on work and employment, unions and labour relations, organizational governance, labour and social policy, and co-operative development. Major current projects include undertaking explorations of rural issues and the causes of the gender earnings gap. She edited the Labor and Employment Relations Association annual research volume, Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment (2020), distributed through Cornell University ILR Press and co-edited (with Clark Banack) Building Inclusive Communities in Rural Canada (2023) published with the University of Alberta Press.
Dionne helped develop a co-operative model of economic and social development alongside western Canadian rural settler and indigenous communities as one of the co-investigators on the Co-operative Innovation Project. CIP led to the creation of a non-profit organization, Co-operatives First, dedicated to working with rural communities to address the needs identified by community members. Dionne was a founding board member of Co-operatives First.
Dionne holds a PhD in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Alberta School of Business, a Bachelor of Commerce from Dalhousie University, and a Chartered Professional in Human Resources designation from CPHR Saskatchewan. Her research is published in national and international peer-reviewed academic journals, and she holds four international awards for her research and three university teaching awards.
Learn more about Dionne and her research in the video below from our “Meet a Fellow” series.