Heather Watts is Mohawk & Anishinaabe from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Education has been a central part of her work over the past ten years, graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in Inclusive Education, and Columbia University Teachers College with a degree in Literacy Coaching, and working as an elementary school teacher in New York City and in Rochester, NY. Heather has studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in the Education Policy & Management Program and graduated with her Ed.M. in 2019.
Heather is currently a third-year doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education—University of Toronto, in the Social Justice Education program. She serves as an elected member of the OISE Council and sat on the Equity Committee. She has recently been awarded a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, through The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), a highly competitive national award competition. Her work centres on reconciliation and reclamation of Indigenous ways of knowing in modern-day education systems.
Professionally, Heather is the Acting Education Manager for the Six Nations Lifelong Learning Taskforce, researching and engaging with the community around draft recommendations for a lifelong learning education system grounded in Haudenosaunee languages and culture. She also works as Training Officer in the environmental sector, developing and implementing learning modules related to the topics of Reconciliation, Identity and Privilege, as well as Indigenous worldviews of Land.