Maggie MacDonnell - Academy

Winner of the Global Teacher Prize 2018

Maggie MacDonnell, also known as “The Million Dollar Teacher”,  is an educator and sport for development practitioner with over 15 years of global field experience. Her work has brought her to many corners of the globe and ranged from working with Congolese refugees, to Tanzanian HIV/AIDS activists, to Inuit youth in Northern Canada. She completed her undergraduate in Human Kinetics at St. Francis Xavier University, studied community development at Coady International Institute, and pursued her Masters on gender, sport and community development at the University of Toronto. She studied directly under Dr. Bruce Kidd and her work on sport as a tool in peacebuilding was shared at the Beijing Olympics.  In 2009 she was awarded a prestigious Jeanne Sauve Fellowship at McGill University. 

In 2010, Maggie began teaching in a fly-in Inuit community called Salluit, where she helped establish an all-girls project based learning program. In 2017 Maggie was named the winner of the US $1,000,000 Global Teacher Prize, standing out from over 20,000 nominees from 179 countries. Maggie has been recognized for her work by the Governor General, to the Albert Einstein Foundation to most recently being named one of BBC’s top 100 Women. Maggie is passionate about creating education programs that create opportunities for social mobility, empower youth and cultivate healthy communities. She is the co-founder of Qajaq/Kayak – an organization that aims to revitalize the culture of kayaking with Inuit youth and adults. She is also co-founder of the Nunavik Run Club which trains Inuit youth to both be runners and philanthropists.