Recognizing community advocate, leader, facilitator Kelly Terbasket
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Learn more about RRU’s Alumni Changemaker Achievement Awards.
Kelly Terbasket is a proud Syilx woman who grew up and lives on the traditional lands of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band in BC. She is also, on her mother’s side, a fifth-generation settler with German and English heritage.
Shaped by her blended family heritage, Terbasket developed a lifelong commitment to bridging cultures and empowering Indigenous people across the province.
Terbasket, an RRU Certified Executive Coach, is co-founder and program director of IndigenEYEZ and kinSHIFT, organizations that support emerging Indigenous leaders and equip them with tools to decolonize and Indigenize within their communities.
For this work, she will be presented with an Alumni Changemaker Achievement Award by Royal Roads University this spring. Terbasket will be awarded with the Community Changemaker Award, which recognizes an alum who is leading systemic community change.
Removing barriers, repairing connections
Early in her long career in Indigenous community development, Terbasket worked for Health Canada supporting Head Start programs on reserves across BC. Doing this work, she noticed the same recurring barriers stemming from broken relationships caused by the intergenerational trauma of colonization, residential schools and being disconnected from the land.
“When you have multi-generational, unaddressed issues, they just compound and get in the way of people coming together to do what needs to be done,” she says.
The IndigenEYEZ program has reached more than 10,000 people with workshops that share tools to foster connectivity with self, community members and the land.
After leaving Health Canada, Terbasket worked as a freelance consultant while furthering her education in coaching and facilitation, in the hope that once her training was complete, she could work with communities to remove barriers. That’s when she started IndigenEYEZ, which has now reached more than 10,000 people with workshops that share tools to foster connectivity with self, community members and the land.
“Learning is not informational alone,” Terbasket says, explaining her focus on creating training where participants get to experience and practice the tools they are learning, a holistic approach that draws on the example of her Syilx ancestors.
Reflecting on the past and looking to the future
The learning that she champions is also inclusive of non-Indigenous allies with kinSHIFT programs that educate settlers about colonial history, the biases associated with that history and the shifts needed for meaningful reconciliation.
Driven by her vision of supporting an intergenerational legacy of wellbeing, Terbasket doesn’t often consider the past but says the Alumni Changemaker Achievement Award has been an opportunity to take a moment and look back.
“There is so much to do, I tend to focus on where I'm going,” she says. “The award caused me to pause and consider the journey and the people along the way who have made it possible. I feel honoured.”
It also caused her to reflect on her Royal Roads experience and its impact on her.
Education was fuel for her vision
“The coach approach that I learned at Royal Roads is ingrained in me. It taught me to facilitate in a way that draws the strengths and gifts from others by asking powerful questions and weaving everyone’s input together to create a shared dream.”
She recalls the practice coaching students did with one another. “I remember so distinctly when I was getting coached by one of my peers, that feeling of really believing in myself.” Terbasket says. “It was fuel for being able to act on the vision that has become IndigenEYEZ. It was such a gift because this isn’t just a job for me – it’s my life purpose.
“Everything is interconnected,” she says, reflecting on the many partners, committed staff and the large circle of Aunties and Uncles who have caught the vision. “Only together, by empowering one another, can we create ripple effects to reach across generations.”
About the awards
The Alumni Changemaker Achievement Awards showcase the diverse talents and accomplishments of RRU’s alumni network as they advance the university’s vision to inspire people with the courage to transform the world.
A celebration for the award-winners will take place as part of Alumni Weekend May 1–2, 2026, which also includes a keynote address by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Sheila Watt-Cloutier, alongside inspiring talks, workshops, and tours.