McGill University’s first Black Dean says there’s still work to do

Dr. Yolande Brown Chan made it her mission to help pave the way for future generations.

With her positive outlook and calm composure, one might think Dr. Yolande Brown Chan has led an easy life.

“I look back on times of love: a very strong family, a season of maybe innocence,” she said about her formative years.

Chan was appointed as Dean of McGill University’s Faculty of Management in 2021. Four years later, she remains one of only a few black Deans in Canada.

Chan says it all started with her high-achieving Jamaican parents, who encouraged her to push herself.

“I wanted to be a priest, actually. Growing up, I was very interested in my faith but women couldn’t be priests, at least not in the Anglican community that I had been raised in,” she explained.

Instead, Chan focused on her academics. She excelled in math and engineering while on scholarship at MIT.

She then went to England to study management at Oxford University. It was there that she had one of her earlier encounters with racism.

She said while visiting a store, she realized an employee was refusing to serve her.

“She basically went to the person behind me, and then the next person, and then the next person. So eventually I said I’m standing at the front of the line, I would like to check out. And she just closed the cashier and left,” Chan recalled.

She says the longer her resume grew, the more incidents occurred and the more her innocence was chipped away.

“Before, I would say I am a Black woman. I would say I’m Yolande Brown Chan. But I left Jamaica and the walls around me disappeared because then I was exposed to less kind views of how communities come together,” the Dean told CTV News.

With only a handful of Black Deans in Canada and Chan being the first at McGill, she’s made it her mission to help pave the way for future generations. Her efforts throughout her career have included leading formal reviews of racial equity, and increasing access for racialized communities.

“Just because I’m doing okay, that’s not enough,” she emphasized.

Chan hopes for a world where she’s the first of many more to come, and a world where all those who merit have opportunity.