Obituary: Sherry Mumford, UFV’s first Distinguished Alumni Award winner

Dr. Sherry Mumford, the first person to receive a Distinguished Alumni Award (in 2003) and one of UFV’s Remarkable 50 Alumni (in 2024), passed away on September 5.

Sherry was a mature student and mother when she enrolled at UFV in the 1990s. After completing a BA in Criminology, she kept on going, earning another BA in Child and Youth Care at UVic, then an MA in Criminology and a PhD from Simon Fraser. In the meantime, Sherry was launching a career that made a major impact in the community.

She worked with the Ministry of Child and Family Development as a regional addictions consultant. She joined Fraser Health’s Mental Health and Substance Use (MHSU) program, first as the addictions leader, then as a manager for various substance use services. She became director of MHSU in 2009 and stayed in that role until she retired.

She called it a career in 2017 after logging more than 40 years in the substance use field.

But retirement didn’t quite take root for Sherry. She started consulting.

“I stumbled into consulting when some former colleagues asked me to build a service pathway for youth at Foundry — a network of integrated health and wellness services for youth,” she recalls. “When they asked me to submit an invoice, Mumford Consulting Services was born.”

Read more about Sherry here.

See her obituary here.

Her celebration of life will be held on Sat, Sept 27 at the Vineyard in Chilliwack (45892 Wellington Avenue).