Larissa Maxwell

B.A. Trinity Western University and Pacific Life College, 2011
MBA, UBC Sauder School of Business, 2021

From a young age I’ve been drawn to great stories that repair broken identities, uplift communities, reveal important truths, and shape great leadership and organizational practice.

My own story is built on the shoulders and legacy of my Italian, Scottish, and Irish ancestors, imbued with deep values of service, relationship, soul, and audacity, and our family narratives of sacrifice, loss, reclamation, and healing.

I am drawn to work that is courageous and has the power to transform communities, cities, and countries, leading me to roles that have involved national executive leadership in justice and social services, participatory action research, rehabilitative healing and therapeutic practice, program design, teaching, system transformation, and ESG in business.

I am a Board member at the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, an abstract acrylic and encaustic artist, and a lover of great food. In the winter you’ll find me snowshoeing, taking in the quiet of the mountains and forests.

I live on the territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (The Squamish First Nation) with my family and my two pugs, Ollie and Otis.

We’re telling a lot of stories- our own stories, the stories of others, stories through organizations and groups and cultures.

But are the stories we’re telling ethical? Truthful? Safe? Effective? Are diverse communities of lived experience empowered through these stories? Or are our stories exploiting subjects, coercing advocacy, creating trauma pornography, and building foundations for long term harm?

My doctoral research, From Communities to Corporations: Ethical Storytelling in First and Second Person Narratives, examines what ethical storytelling means across diverse global communities and fields (such as justice, healthcare, business, journalism, and social services), how we can safeguard and uplift narratives to fulfill meaningful purposes, how to increase lived experience inclusion, and whether ethically framed stories are just as effective as unethically framed stories.

My interdisciplinary work involves: qualitative research involving interviews, focus groups, content analysis, and case studies using a participatory action design with lived experience communities, and utilizing frameworks of critical theory, de-colonization, symbolic interactionism, trauma informed practice, lived experience inclusion, and cultural safety.

ethical storytelling, lived experience inclusion, living consent, trauma informed asset based narratives, consumption goal analysis;