The Fulcrum sat down with UOSU’s Executive Director Meredith Kerr to demystify what student unions do one position at a time.
For most students, the student governance world is far removed from their campus experience, and it comes as quite the shock to learn that a handful of their fellow undergrads help draft the University of Ottawa Student Union’s (UOSU’s) whopping seven-million-dollar annual operating budget. But is it really just students who keep the union running? Largely yes, but there are a notable number of professionals in the room. From payroll staff, the manager of services like PiViK, and perhaps most importantly, the second-highest managerial position following the president, the Executive Director (ED).
The day-to-day of an ED
UOSU’s Meredith Kerr sees her job as making the visions of the elected students a reality.
“The elected executives and the board create the strategic direction (a North Star) for us to follow. So I ultimately shape that into what we see on campus.”
This means coordinating with all the union’s services, evaluating work done by executives, supporting HR, and moulding the overall culture of the organization. The executive director is not above the executives, and their role ultimately comes down to supporting student leaders, stepping back, and empowering the elected officials to take charge.
How’d you get involved?
Managerial staff play a very specific and contextually unique role in the world of student politics, which sparks the question of how they got involved in the first place. Kerr was personally never involved in student politics as a student, but her work with unions, progressive political campaigns, and non-profit poverty reduction initiatives ultimately led her to UOSU.
Kerr spent five years as a union officer at Unifor National, but was concerned that unions were paying for tenure rather than skills and felt more needed to be done at a systemic level to support workers.
“I worked in politics. I worked in unions before that, for the Union itself. And then I started to see things that were happening in unions that had me concerned as a young person, and I wanted to organize a little bit deeper.”
She moved between political organizing and union work, gaining a dual perspective on labour relations before pivoting to non-profit work at the Parkdale Food Centre.
The local centre strives to “build healthier, more connected neighbours and neighbourhoods through good food” and frames nutrition as a human right. Approaching “poverty reduction through a human rights-based lens” at Parkdale Food Centre was Kerr’s final stepping stone before being recruited to UOSU.
Student unions were always on Kerr’s radar. After “years of plugging away at different jobs and having different experiences that allowed [her] to recognize that leadership isn’t about top-down,” she felt ready to step into the ED role and tackle the governance side of advocacy.
What’s it like working for students?
Kerr admits that “it’s a different dynamic than a normal non-profit because of our governance structure.”
“It puts things on its toes, [the executives are] young people, they’re students that are above me as the executive director, so that creates a different sort of power dynamic, a different perspective, but I really try to embrace that.”
Kerr notes that overcoming the generational gap means showing up with “a little bit of grace.”
“It will challenge you significantly, because there’s always a lot of things happening within the union itself, in particular the peer-to-peer dynamics.”
When it comes to navigating these dynamics, Kerr says, “we haven’t had a lot of student leaders and staff conflicts at all,” and with peer-to-peer conflicts, she tries not to intervene.
When her support is wanted, she says, she aims to meet students where they are but otherwise lets them lead.
On the other hand, Kerr says senior staff could benefit from this grace as well.
“We have good intentions all the time, and we want to hear from you. We want to hear from you kindly. We want to offer the best campus life we can and make sure that we’re reaching all of those underrepresented communities within equity-seeking groups. We want to support everybody.”
Student unions aren’t your average non-profit organization
Coming from a non-profit background herself, Kerr proudly noted that “[UOSU] is reasonably funded and not always chasing money.” Unlike most non-profits that have to compete for funding and grants, student unions can “actually identify, for the majority, what monthly revenue we’ll be bringing in.” That is, of course, subject to Bill 33, which poses substantial threats to this funding and the services it enables.
Kerr notes how UOSU stands out in its user-centred design by keeping students in mind at every stage when building programs and services. Services like the Feminist Resource Centre, the Food Bank, the Pride Centre, and so on, are run by students and provide them with job opportunities in addition to aid.
However, it is worth noting that these centres largely rely on volunteer labour, and UOSU salaries are highly concentrated at the top, with the executive director being the highest-salaried individual in the union.
Let’s talk finances
The allocation of revenue from undergraduate student fees is ultimately managed by and voted in by students.
”It’s the students who really have the say.” Kerr works closely with the Operations Commissioner and the Director of Finance to ensure “that we’re not spending more than we have; that it’s a reasonable, responsible, and transparent budget that is aligned with our North Star.” While the executive director puts forward proposals, it’s the elected student officials who decide if they get approved. A matter of fact that highlights both the importance of voting, and of voting for officials you trust to manage millions in students’ best interests.
Downsides of the job
Kerr says that although her time as ED has been the “greatest professional experience of [her] life”, the nature of the role means EDs “live and work in almost isolation from [their] peers.” The hardest part of her job stems from the fact that “you live in a big silo here sometimes. When things go really wrong and sad, or if things are hard, you’re on your own because some of the elected students are experiencing this for the first time.”
However, ever since the Association of Managers in Canadian colleges, university, and Student Centres (AMICCUS) conference in October 2025, things have changed. The week-long event connected student union EDs across the country by creating dialogue around big issues like declining mental health amongst students, food insecurity, and student union-specific problems like frequent turnover.
It can be challenging to “plan five years ahead when you know you have a changing leadership team all the time.” Increased communication and collaboration between EDs since the AMICCUS conference will hopefully help student union managers learn from each other and better support students across Canada.
