Failure not an option for Air Canada's Environmental Sustainability Manager

April 16, 2020

On academic probation after a challenging first year at the University of Toronto, Jackie Kankam was set to give up on the big city experience and return to Winnipeg where she was born and raised to continue her higher education journey.

“It was my first time in Toronto, there were no parents to wake me up and my residence was a Best Western hotel,” she said. “I was living a fast life and I just didn’t do well.”

With the distractions inherent with living in a metropolis for the first time a bit too much to handle and on the verge of enrolling at the University of Manitoba, she pulled herself together and rethought her strategy.

When Kankam was in elementary school, her mother – Rose Kankam – returned to the classroom and graduated from university with a Nursing degree. Charles Kankam, the family patriarch and trained auto mechanic, held three jobs at one time, including his nearly 45-year full-time gig at MacDon which specializes in the manufacturing of high-performance harvesting equipment.

They were among the first wave of Ghanaian immigrants to migrate to Canada in the 1970s following deteriorating economic and political conditions in the West African country.

“My mom had a better GPA than I did and my dad woke up in the middle of the night to prepare meals for her while she was studying,” said Kankam who is Air Canada’s Environment Sustainability Manager. “My parents have amazing strength and don’t allow obstacles to stop them from doing anything. I am also a very competitive person and I realized I just couldn’t give up on something so quickly because I didn’t do well. So, I changed my mind and came back to U of T.”

Wanting to move away from Winnipeg where she was born and raised, Kankam was also accepted by the University of British Columbia (UBC), which was her first choice, Queen’s University and McGill University.

“I suffer from asthma and have an aunt who lives in Toronto, so my mom thought it would be best to go to U of T,” she said.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Kankam buckled down to her studies and graduated in 2007 with a degree in Environmental Resource Management.

“I started out doing Business, but realized I didn’t want to do that,” she said. “I wanted to do International Relations, but I registered late so I got into the environmental side of International Relations. I took a chance doing that, much to my parents chagrin as they wanted me to pursue a more traditional field. But, we all live on the planet and I wanted to do something that would have an impact.”

After about four months working in Toronto as a Waste Co-ordinator, Kankam relocated to Calgary and joined Golder Associates as a Project Co-ordinator. In that role, she co-ordinated and prepared the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Jackpine and Pierre River mine projects and other oil sands projects among other duties.

Two years later, she left and joined Suncor Energy as a Regulatory Compliance Co-ordinator. She was assigned to Firebag which is Suncor’s largest in situ operations located about 120 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray in Alberta.

The only Black female on the site which she worked at between Mondays and Thursdays, Kankam’s functions included developing, co-ordinating and executing the Operational Excellence Management System, building the legal and risk registries and serving as the business unit lead auditor.

“The one downside of that job was that I didn’t eat healthy for the almost two-and-a-half years I was there and I put on about 60 pounds which I had to shed,” the 36-year-old said.

Serving as an Environmental Advisor for 44 months with an oil and natural gas company in Calgary where she developed environment and sustainability projects and programs, Kankam moved back to Toronto in the summer of 2015 and worked for a real estate agency as a Sustainability Manager before joining Air Canada in March 2018.

Passionate about the environment and fond of travel, she has found her dream job.

“Also, Air Canada is not talking the talk as we have a leadership team that’s not just committed to doing the right thing because there is an expectation that we do good,” said Kankam who completed Harvard University’s Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership program that teaches leaders how to position sustainability as the driver of organizational engagement, innovation and change. “They actually understand that we have a responsibility. I made a choice to work for a large corporation as opposed to a non-profit because I believe you can make more of an impact by working from inside the system. I also prefer to work for a big organization that wants to do good as Air Canada has proven.”

Two years ago, Air Canada was named the 2018 Eco-Airline of the Year by the respected airline industry publication, ‘Air Transport World (ATW)’. In recognizing the national carrier’s accomplishments, ATW cited the airline’s commitment to emissions reductions by supporting the development of alternative fuels and its many green programs and partnerships, including being the first airline in the world to voluntarily join the World Bank’s International Monetary Fund Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.

Jackie Kankam

When not working, Kankam – who was a moderator at the 10th annual G(irls) Global Summit in Japan in 2019 -- loves to travel.

She’s visited nearly 50 countries and islands, including Bali where she spent the last Xmas holidays with good friend Moya Teklu who is Legal Aid Ontario’s Policy Counsel, and the Galapagos which is a volcanic archipelago in the Pacific Ocean.

Kankam’s first vacation nearly 12 years ago didn’t go well.

While on a two-week backpack trip to Thailand, a small boat she was travelling in with a female British tourist capsized in a storm.

“I cannot swim and the sudden storm started to rock the vessel violently,” Kankam recalled. “I thought I was going to die, so I called my mom and brother (Bernard) to tell them what was happening. I remember my brother yelling, ‘Why are you on a boat’? and I just calmly said, ‘I am done, I just want to say goodbye and this is it for me’. I hung up, shut off the phone and started to pray before passing out and waking up safe.”