Stikeman had a 30-year career at the National Film Board of Canada, and led its women's unit, Studio D, from 1990 until its closure in 1996.
[1] Among her more noteworthy achievements at Studio D, Stikeman was the co-producer on the award-winning documentary Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives.
[4] After retirement, Stikeman has worked with the Blue Metropolis literary festival as part of the Premio Azul Programming Committee[5] in Montreal, Quebec, a non-profit organization that promotes and encourages reading, writing and creativity for people of all cultures.
Stikeman started sponsoring the Metropolis Azul Prize in 2013, which is awarded each year to an author from any country who creates a work of fiction that treats aspects of Hispanic culture and is published in Spanish, English or French.
Stikeman is credited with bringing a deep commitment to film activism and "getting more women of different ethnic backgrounds into filmmaking".