Building relationships to grow one of Canada’s leading academic health sciences hospitals
Age: 36
Job Title: Director of Corporate Partnerships at University Hospital Foundation
Sean McLaughlin once planned to follow his family into law. As a humanities student at the University of Alberta — and a player on the Golden Bears golf team — he set high expectations for himself, inspired in part by his grandfather, a Queen’s Court justice. But after taking the LSAT and feeling disappointed with his score, he chose a different path. He completed his history degree and turned to the business side of sports, joining Edmonton’s CFL team (then the Eskimos) in 2016 and eventually becoming the club’s senior manager of corporate partnerships.
Living by the team’s six-month schedule year after year, McLaughlin helped execute The Brick’s five-year naming rights for Commonwealth Stadium and was part of the activation team for the 2018 Grey Cup Festival, which raised four times its sponsorship goal. It was hard to picture a better job — until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
It would be an understatement to say it was an enormous challenge to manage sponsorships over the next two seasons, one of which saw no football at all. Half the staff had been laid off, and those who remained were navigating restrictions with a skeleton crew. Further complicating matters was the team’s contentious name change from Eskimos to Elks, all while McLaughlin was starting a family of his own. He guided the organization through those difficult years, but by 2022 was ready for a new chapter, joining the University Hospital Foundation.
At the foundation, he brought with him the relationships — and the tenacity — forged in professional sports. As director of corporate partnerships, McLaughlin helped rebuild corporate support for one of Canada’s leading academic health sciences hospitals after pandemic-related opportunity losses. “I had no idea about the level of complexity in the non-profit world,” he admits.
But complexity is where McLaughlin thrives. Putting together the 2023 Festival of Trees, the foundation’s biggest gala yet, he has shepherded his organization’s sponsorships and fundraising to new heights. The organization’s 2024 gala set a new record still, raising $2.6 million, and it’s on track to set another one in 2025. “We have a great path forward for the foundation right now.”
This article appears in the November/December 2025 issue of Edify
