S. Ann Colbourne, M.D., donates $1 million to NorQuest College Centre for Intercultural Education

S. Ann Colbourne, M.D. (I ’93, ADGM ’94), donated $1 million to NorQuest College in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to further the college’s diversity and inclusion efforts. Dr. Colbourne is chair of the NorQuest College Board of Governors.

The college’s Centre for Intercultural Education (CIE) will be renamed the Colbourne Institute for Inclusive Leadership in her honor. The Colbourne Institute will carry on the work of the CIE, providing services that encourage and support organizational capacity in developing and sustaining inclusive cultures.

“I have a deeply held passion for the agenda of diversity,” says Dr. Colbourne. “As a college, NorQuest really helps shape the mosaic of the communities it serves. It honours and respects where individuals come from but still creates a cohesive whole. The ability of NorQuest to take what it does every day and channel that into programming that helps people beyond the walls of the college is very powerful and meaningful.”

Dr. Colbourne is a professor of medicine at the University of Alberta. She recently retired as senior medical director of Transformation and Innovation at Alberta Health Services.

She also is a member of the Mayo Clinic Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Dr. Colbourne has received awards including the President’s Excellence Award from Alberta Health Services, the Plummer Society Award of Excellence from Mayo Clinic and a Rhodes Scholarship from the University of Oxford, England.