Making meaningful change requires one to look beyond the status quo. To think and do things differently. More human. More revealing.
These three University of Alberta alumni have made careers of looking closer — questioning familiar narratives and challenging what we think we know. But they didn’t stop there. Through words, research and action, they’ve used what they discovered to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.
Meet the 2026 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients.
Myrna Ann Kostash, ’65 BA
For more than five decades, Myrna Kostash has looked deeper into familiar Canadian stories — and asked which ones are missing. A pioneer of Canadian creative non-fiction, Kostash has explored identity, belonging and collective memory across more than a dozen books. Her landmark 1977 work, All of Baba’s Children, brought Ukrainian immigrant experiences in Alberta into the national conversation, establishing her fearless approach to storytelling. Works including Bloodlines, Prodigal Daughter and Ghosts in a Photograph continued to probe the histories and identities that shape us.
Beyond the page, Kostash has helped build the organizations that sustain Canadian literary life. Her decades of advocacy and mentorship have strengthened Canada’s literary community and nurtured generations of writers who follow.
Judy Mill, ’96 MN, ’00 PhD
What does it mean to look beyond a diagnosis — and see the person living with it? Dr. Judy Mill has spent five decades answering that. The nurse, academic and activist helped change how HIV and AIDS are understood, by considering not only physical risk factors, but the social, political and cultural realities of people’s lives.
Her groundbreaking doctoral research in Ghana was among the first to examine HIV through gender and race, an approach she later brought to partnerships with Indigenous communities in Canada. From clinical work in Zambia and Malawi to leadership in Canada and Rwanda, Mill has paired rigorous research with respect for lived experience. And retirement hardly meant retreat: she supported African grandmothers raising children orphaned by AIDS and renewed her nursing licence to help deliver COVID-19 vaccinations. Through it all, Mill has challenged stigma by keeping the people behind the diagnosis at the heart of her work.
