Captain Nichola Goddard Award Laureate Announcement
The Captain Nichola Goddard Leadership Award was created to recognize and honour a young Canadian innovator and trailblazer who has made an inspiring early or mid-career contribution to Canadian security and defence.
The award is about remembering the leadership qualities of Nichola Goddard, her character and her vibrant spirit and is intended to celebrate Canadians who live and succeed by the same values that Nichola demonstrated such as inclusivity, commitment, courage, and valour within our defence and security community including; Canadian Armed Forces, academia and industry.
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine — 2024 Captain Nichola Goddard Recipient
Charlotte is the Vice President, Ottawa Operations and a Fello
w at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, as well as Triple Helix’s Executive Director and Gender Advisor. She is also a PhD Student at Deakin University, where she studies the role of the personnel management system in the killings of Somali civilians at the hand of Canadian soldiers. She is the author of The Ones We Let Down: Toxic Leadership Culture and Gender Integration in the Canadian Forces, 1989-1999 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). This book, which looks into the toxic culture of leadership in the Canadian Armed Forces during the 1990s and its impact on gender integration, was named among The Hill Times‘ Best Books of 2022.
Her research interests include questions of military leadership, culture change, and personnel policy, topics on which she regularly comments in the media. For this work, Charlotte was recognized as a 2022 Women in Defence and Security Emerging Leader. She regularly participates in consultation organized by the Department of National Defence and has given talks to West Point and RMC cadets, to the National Strategic Program at the Canadian Forces College, and to the Australian War College. She is currently working on projects on civilian-military relations, the Somalia Affair, and organizational change in the Canadian military.
Prior to working at CGAI, Charlotte served as the Assistant to the Executive Director of Women In International Security-Canada and has worked as a research assistant and translator on projects about gender mainstreaming and integration in NATO Armed Forces and on the gendered dimension of veteran transition at Queen’s University Center for International and Defence Policy (CIDP).
Captain Nichola Goddard
Captain Nichola Kathleen Sarah Goddard, MSM (May 2, 1980 – May 17, 2006) was the first female Canadian combat soldier to make the ultimate sacrifice in combat, and the 16th Canadian soldier killed in Canadian operations in Afghanistan. Since her passing 17 years ago. Nichola has become Canada’s daughter and a permanent symbol of courage in the face adversity.
Born to British and Canadian school teachers in Madang, Papua New Guinea, Goddard spent most of her childhood in various locations, including Black Lake and Lac la Ronge, Saskatchewan. Her hobbies included cross-country skiing and running, and she had competed in biathlon events. She led a local Scout troop with her fiancé (later husband), Jason Beam, while they were officer cadets at the Royal Military College in Kingston.
Captain Goddard was serving with the 1st Regiment Royal Canadian Horse Artillery of PPCLI as a forward observation officer. During a firefight in the Panjwaye District. It was part of a joint two-day operation between Canadian and Afghan troops, to secure Kandahar’s outskirts after a rumor of Taliban preparations to launch an assault on the city. As troops were moving into a mosque to capture 15 alleged Taliban members, several dozen hidden militants began firing from neighbouring houses. As a crew commander, Goddard was standing half-exposed in her LAV III, which was hit by two rocket-propelled grenades early in the battle.
The battle lasted most of the day on the 17th and into the night and ended shortly after an American B-1 Lancer dropped a 500lbs bomb. In the end, the two-day operation saw Goddard, an Afghan National Army soldier, and 40 Taliban killed, as well as approximately 20 Taliban captured, which early reports mistakenly said could have included Mullah Dadullah.
