Eleanor Young
President and CEO
Housing Northwest Territories
Eleanor Young joined Housing NWT as President and CEO on May 17, 2021.
Eleanor was the Deputy Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs (MACA) from September 2016 to May 2021. Before that, she spent eleven years working within MACA in the roles of Assistant Deputy Minister, Regional Operations and Director, Community Operations.
At MACA Eleanor was involved in several key initiatives including the implementation of the New Deal for NWT Communities, leading the development and implementation of the Accountability Framework, and negotiating and implementing of a number of federal infrastructure agreements. She received her first Premier’s Award for Collaboration in 2010 for work on developing Integrated Community Sustainability Plans and her second in 2014 as part of the Accountability Framework Development Team.
Eleanor has worked in the Northwest Territories since 1987, with approximately 15 years of that time spent at the community level. Eleanor came north as a cooperative student placement in 1987 and then returned north after graduation in 1988 to continue working on regional land use planning initiatives, particularly in the Beaufort Delta Region. Some of that early work formed the basis for the Community Conservation Plans adopted by each of the Inuvialuit communities. Moving to Ulukhatok in 1990, Eleanor worked as Housing Manager and then as part of a community transfer initiative, she became the Senior Administrative Officer (SAO) with the Hamlet of Ulukhaktok but also brought the local housing operations under the authority of community government council. Eleanor served a number of terms as President and Board member for the Association of Municipal Administrators (AMANWT). She worked briefly for the NWT Association of Communities and the Local Government Administrators of the Northwest Territories (formerly AMANWT) in 2003/2004 when she first left Ulukhaktok and before joining the GNWT.
Eleanor is a graduate of the University of Waterloo (1988) with a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies. Eleanor is the first recipient of the SAO Certification of Competency issued by the Trades, Apprenticeship and Occupational Certification Board in the NWT. She also holds a Masters Certificate in Municipal Leadership from the Shulich Executive Learning Branch of York University.