Sarah Cox has been in the Public Service of Canada for 27 years, the last eighteen of which have been at the executive level. She has spent the bulk of her career at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). Her areas of work have included Education, Evaluation, Inuit Relations, Federal/Provincial /Territorial & Intergovernmental Affairs, the Northern Strategy and Circumpolar/International Affairs, to name a few.

Sarah has managed several complex projects, which include negotiating the implementation of the Common Experience Payment for the Residential Schools settlement, a partnership with the National Film Board which led to the development of a comprehensive collection of Inuit films (Unikkausivut) that was widely distributed across Canada, and the development of a memorandum to cabinet for Inuit relocation. She also worked on the development of the Northern Strategy. Sarah thrives when working with complex challenges and specifically enjoys working to break down horizontal barriers across government and organizations.

More recently, Sarah held the position of Public Servant in Residence at Concordia University where she developed and taught a class on Federal Policy in Canada’s Arctic in the MPPPA program. She was the Director of Circumpolar, International and Intergovernmental Affairs at CIRNAC and for fifteen years held the additional position of the Canadian Head of Delegation for the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) in the Arctic Council. She led on several projects in the SDWG including areas of renewable energy, food security, blue bio economy and mental wellbeing.