Presenters
Dwayne Appleby
Dwayne Appleby is an Associate of the One Earth Initiative Society and Funding Director for We Canada, a Canadian civil society initiative advocating for Canadian leadership at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. He has participated in sustainability conferences in Vancouver and New York, and will be a member of We Canada’s delegation to the Earth Summit 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. His areas of interest include climate adaptive technologies, agricultural climate adaptation, and applying the principles of sustainability to traditional development studies. Dwayne holds a BA in International Studies and a Certificate in Sustainable Community Development from Simon Fraser University.
Jolan Bailey
As the Canadian Outreach Coordinator for ForestEthics, Jolan Bailey works to mobilize public pressure to move Canada away from risky fossil fuel developments and towards a clean energy economy. He is currently focused on building the movement to stop the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker project, and leveraging pressure to protect B.C.’s Sacred Headwaters from Shell’s plans to frack for coal-bed methane. Jolan completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria.”
Sophia Baker-French
Sophia Baker-French is a Registered Dietitian and has completed two undergraduate degrees here at UBC and is currently enrolled in a Masters of Science degree in Human Nutrition. She has been the Coordinator for the UBC Food System Project for the past 3 years. In this role, she has worked closely with campus food providers to develop and implement action research projects carried out by students each year to improve the sustainability of the UBC food system. Key food system areas that the project works on are improvements to food production, food procurement, waste management, food system marketing/education, built environment, and food policy. Some project accomplishments include annual events such as “Meet your maker,” UBC generated informational food labels, all whole fruit sold on campus is local or fair-trade, LFS Orchard Garden, and so much more.
Cameron Bell
Cameron Bell is in his third year at the University of Northern British Columbia, working towards a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies. He is originally from Barrie, Ontario, and came out west and up north to study at a university that is actively working towards sustainability. As the President of UNBC’s student-run environmental club, Students for a Green University (SGU), Cam led the club last year as they ran events such as bicycle-blended smoothie sales, workshops, presentations, and awareness campaigns. He is currently the Associate Director of Campus Sustainability on the Northern Undergraduate Student Society (NUGSS), and he works with university administration, staff and faculty on the Green University Planning Committee, which oversees and provides input on projects like UNBC’s Green Fund and bioenergy heating system. Cam is also on the goBEYOND Board of Directors, and he looks forward to seeing his fellow directors and friends at the Sustainable Campuses Conference this year! Cam believes that food is a key component of sustainability, and is looking forward to helping SGU construct a passively solar heated dome greenhouse on campus this spring.
Adriane Carr
Born in Vancouver, Adriane Carr earned a Master’s degree in urban geography from UBC in 1980, writing her thesis on the role of citizen groups in building community spirit and shaping development in the neighbourhood of Kitsilano. Councillor Carr taught for twelve years at Vancouver’s Langara College. In 1989 she left teaching to join the executive team at Western Canada Wilderness Committee. Councillor Carr is a well-known leader in Green politics. In 1983 she co-founded the BC Green Party, North America’s first Green Party, and in 1984 co-founded the Green Party of Vancouver. From 2000 to 2006 she led the BC Green Party and became the first Green leader anywhere in Canada to be included in televised leaders’ debates. She currently co-chairs the Canadian Women Voters’ Congress non-partisan Women’s Campaign School.
Leah Chesterman
Leah Chesterman is currently a Campus Food Strategy Group Coordinator at Vancouver Island University. She has recently become enamoured with growing her own food. This new addiction came about after completing her Permaculture Design Certificate last spring. Now, through the medium of food Leah feels that she is able to coalesce her dedication to environmental protection, social justice, and physiological health. Leah’s “food work” on campus to date includes working with the VIU community gardens. She is also a long-standing active member of Solutions: A Sustainability Network , a group of motivated, passionate and like-minded students and faculty at Vancouver Island University (VIU). She sees the opportunity for institutional reform through the Campus Food Systems Project as being an exciting step towards food security and positive community engagement on Vancouver Island.
Elder Margaret George
Margaret George was born in Skawahlook First Nation and raised in Ruby Creek by her grandparents. She attended school on her reserve and graduated from UBC. She has been involved with all sorts of events and activities within her own community and schools in Vancouver. Margaret loves to share her wisdom and introduces her culture with others. She enjoys her life with family, friends, and community. As one of the elders of the program, Margret welcomes all students to share some time with her and hopes to provide guidance for students.
Cameron Fenton
Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Cameron Fenton grew up splitting time between the rocky mountains and the northern prairies. He developed a passion for do it yourself organizing as a teenager in the Edmonton music scene, starting both a promotion company and record label and connecting music with grassroots movements for social and environmental justice. After moving to Montreal to study at Concordia University Cameron became increasingly involved in climate organizing, and has since been involved in numerous initiatives with the CYCC and other organizations. Cam is also an action and strategy trainer, and is dedicated to empowering youth to become the movement we need to ensure a safe, just and clean future for our generation and those that will follow us. Follow him on twitter @CamFenton.
Paige Frewer
Paige Frewer is in her final year of studies in the Biology stream of Environmental Science at SFU, and holds a Minor in Dialogue. A lifelong activist for ecological conservation, she has in recent years discovered a concordant passion for experiential education, catalyzed most notably by her participation in SFU’s Undergraduate Semester in Dialogue program in 2009. Paige’s primary career ambition is to help facilitate conflict resolution via dialogic processes in complex multi-stakeholder environmental issues. Sideline to her academic pursuits, Paige works as a gender performance artist around Vancouver, and promotes the city’s largest and longest running monthly drag king showcase, Man Up.
Randy Galawan
Randy Galawan is a freelance community outreach trainer and facilitator in the Marshal Ganz / Camp Obama model. He trained with Marshall Ganz, the Harvard Lecturer who designed and implemented Barack Obama’s community outreach strategy for the 2008 presidential election campaign. He has trained organizations as diverse as the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Institute of Gender Studies at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, small volunteer-run NGO’s, and politicians at all three levels of government.
Ashish Gurung
Ashish Gurung has a BBA (2010) from Simon Fraser University where is now a Social Media instructor at SFU’s Beedie School of Business. He is an active advisor in the Banner Bags program and serves on the Board of Directors for Kina Social Ventures. Banner bags takes used street banners and takes them to high schools sewing classes where they will be turned into bags. He founded Banner Bags in 2009 and the program has now grown to impact communities across Canada. In 2011, Banner Bags was awarded the top prize for Western Canada’s best student-run environmental program.
Erik Henningsmoen
Erik Henningsmoen holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of Calgary and is pursuing a Bachelor in Applied Technology in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at SAIT Polytechnic and a certificate in International Community Development from Mount Royal University. His interests include sustainable energy technologies, peace-building, international development, and GIS applications.
Maureen Jack-LaCroix
Maureen Jack-LaCroix is the Creative Director of Be The Change Earth Alliance. Maureen founded this non-profit in 2005 after completing a Masters in Eco-Psychology through Naropa. An experienced facilitator and educator for youth and adults, Maureen has created international youth events such as Tears Are Not Enough, Music West Festival and Slam City Jam skate championships.
Chris Jones
Chris Jones is a Program Manager for the Sustainable Cities Initiative (SCI) at the University of Oregon. He coordinates the Sustainable City Year Program, a simple yet radical re-conceptualization of the public research university as catalyst for sustainable community change. Chris holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Princeton University and a master’s degree in environmental studies from the University of Oregon. He joined the Sustainable Cities Initiative after 15 years of experience in information technology management and support.
Ken Josephson
Ken Josephson is a cartographer and graphic artist in the department of Geography at the University of Victoria. With a background in architecture, he was a cartographer with the Canadian Hydrographic Service for 8 years before joining the university in 1980. Since connecting with the global GreenMap movement in 1998, community mapping, participatory design, citizen empowerment and engagement have become his passion.
Kyuwon Kim
Kyuwon Kim is in her fourth year at UBC studying Natural Resources Conservation- Global Perspectives, in the Faculty of Forestry. Kyuwon now calls Toronto home, although she was born in South Korea and raised in Vancouver before attending high school in Toronto. Kyuwon joined Common Energy last year and coordinated the “Do it in the Dark” energy-reduction competition. She found it really rewarding to see the positive behavioral change from students. This year as the Assistant Director, her primary duty is to foster student-development with in Common Energy. Kyuwon believes that to achieve campus sustainability, students need to become leaders in addressing the many sustainability issues.
Dana Lahey
Dana Lahey is the Student Food Network Coordinator for the Sierra Youth Coalition. He studied anthropology and sociology at McGill, but quickly realized his passion for understanding and working with the many different communities and organizational cultures that need to be involved in getting good food from field (and ocean) to table. Starting the McGill Farmers’ Market and the McGill Food Systems Project, Dana spent his degree working to bring together his campus community to improve the sustainability of the university’s food supply. Dana is hopeful about our ability to build sustainable regional food systems through a collaborative and solutions-focused approach, and believes universities are a powerful place to lead this work.
Erin Leckie
Erin Leckie is the Program Manager for Be the Change Earth Alliance’s Student Leadership in Sustainability Program. She has an outdoor education and guiding background, with a Bachelors degree in Adventure Tourism Management and participated in the Redfish School of Change program in 2010.
Emme Lee
Emme Lee is an undergraduate in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. Her studies include plant and soil sciences, the design of sustainable food production systems, and environmental/food policy. She completed the UBC Farm practicum in 2008, and continues to volunteer both off and on-campus with urban agriculture projects. She is an active member of Vancouver’s Urban Farmers community, and recently conducted community-‐based research in assessing the food sovereignty of a community on Vancouver Island. Currently she participates in campus sustainability by working with SEEDS and the UBC’s AMS to establish mid-‐scale vermicomposting processes in the SUB.
Marc Lee
Marc Lee researches and writes on a variety of economic and social policy issues for the CCPA’s BC and National Offices. In addition to tracking federal and provincial budgets and economic trends, Marc has published on a wide range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation. Marc is the Co-Director of the Climate Justice Project, a five-year research partnership with the University of British Columbia, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, examining the links between climate change policies and social justice.
Claudia Li
Claudia Li is a first generation Chinese-Canadian and founded Shark Truth in 2009 to promote awareness and action for shark conservation. She realized the power of cross-cultural storytelling to invoke change in her community. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from SFU and is an alumnus of the Next Up leadership program. Claudia was the Communications Officer for ForestEthics and now focuses her full-time energy on Shark Truth, which has been chosen as a Tides Top 10 for visionary leadership. Claudia was named Top 30 Under 30 by Explore Magazine and has been awarded as a Paul Harris Fellow.
Richard Loat
Richard Loat Richard is CEO and Founder of Five Hole for Food, a non-profit pioneering and redefining the way in which social giving takes place using social media to raise over 65,000 lbs of food in the first 18 months. Backed with four years in the Silicon Valley working with Facebook and a startup internet company, call him a student of social. Richard has taken his passions for all things social media and combined them with various different social projects in order to push how social media can really be used. Recently named one of BC’s Top 24 under 24, Richard is a soon to be graduate at SFU. Oh, and Richard will find a way to play hockey any and everywhere – literally.
Chael MacArthur
Chael MacArthur – alias Tuckamore Moose Bakeapple – ‘Tuckamore’ are the stunted Balsam Fir (Var) and Black Spruce that grow in the Newfoundland coastal alpine where they brave the salt laced winds of the North Atlantic. Their roots hold firmly onto rocks; communities of branches mingle together stretching inward to the land. They create a metaphor of place that reminds us of the power of resilience and the wisdom of the wild. Chael has been teaching this wisdom in outdoor classrooms since the age of 16 and believes his most valuable education began the moment his mother first handed him a raincoat and said, “Dere’s no need t’be indoors on a day like t’day.” It turns out that in Newfoundland, you are a wet weather adventurer, or not at all. A storyteller, educator, musician and explorer, Chael strives to live a one planet lifestyle. As Uncle Tuckles would say, “Young Tuck, my son, he’s silly wit sustainability.”
Jean Marcus
Jean Marcus is the Associate Director of the USI Teaching & Learning Office and oversees the coordination and transformation of sustainability education at UBC. Jean is also a Scientist in Residence with the Vancouver School Board, and has taught various ecology and conservation biology courses. Jean received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Victoria and came to UBC in 2003 for a postdoctoral fellowship in marine conservation.
Dale Mikkelsen
Dale Mikkelsen is the manager of planning and sustainability for the UniverCity Project at Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby Mountain campus. Mikkelsen is charged with raising the bar of sustainable community planning to ensure UniverCity remains on the leading edge of energy efficiency, material conservation, healthy environments and community building. Prior to working with SFU Community Trust, Mikkelsen was the lead project planner for the City of Vancouver’s 2010 Athlete’s Village. He also acted as the City’s Green Building Planner. He serves as a board member for the Cascadia Chapter of the Canadian and US Green Building Council, and sits on the British Columbia Green Building Round Table. Dale is a father of 2 wonderful little kids, and tries to live an active and sustainable lifestyle as a model for his children.
Allison Prime
Allison Prime, aka Cricket, migrated to Coast Salish Territory (Vancouver) from Anishinabe Territory (Ontario) where she spent her childhood summers paddling on the lakes of Algonquin Park. Since then, she has been dedicated to using the outdoor classroom to foster self-confidence in students, as well as a love for each other and the earth. She aims to facilitate students in discovering what they are passionate about, and exploring what their role is in creating change in this world. She spends her free time singing in a choir, learning to play the guitar and exploring local forests.
Vanessa Richards
Vanessa Richards is an inter/multi-disciplinary artist with a foundation in music, live art, theatre, creative writing, collaboration and cultural programming. Her interests include participatory process and the role of the arts and artists (professional and amateur) in place-making, the civic imagination and social sustainability. She is experienced as a teaching artist, consultant, project leader and team member in planning, coordinating and facilitating arts and cultural projects since 1995. Most recently she was on the Advisory Team for the City of Vancouver’s Black History Month 2012, and the Vancouver 125 year-long celebrations. While Director of Community Engagement Through the Arts at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver she started the Woodward’s community choir in partnership with PHS Community Services Society. For details on this drop-in, no-cost, weekly choir see Woodward’s Community Singers on Facebook. You are invited to join them any time.
Liska Richer
Liska Richer co-manages the UBC SEEDS (Social, Ecological, Economic, Development Studies) Program with Campus Sustainability. Since 2004, Liska has worked as a Project Coordinator, an instructor and co-investigator on a jointly initiated SEEDS program’s UBC Food System Project with the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. She has worked extensively with campus stakeholders in developing interdisciplinary and community-based action research curriculum, and in working to create a more sustainable campus community from purchasing, urban agriculture to waste management. She is currently a PhD Candidate in UBC’s Faculty of Land & Food Systems, and has a BA in Sociology.
Justin Ritchie
Justin Ritchie is the Sustainability Coordinator for the UBC Alma Mater Society, the largest student union in Canada. With a background in physics, electrical engineering and systems thinking, his focus at the AMS is on developing accessible student projects to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating sustainability into campus operations on a large scale. He writes for The Tyee while hosting their weekly podcast and also broadcasts on CiTR each Wednesday at 2pm, hosting The Extraenvironmentalist on sustainability issues, available online at http://www.extraenvironmentalist.com
Deanna Rogers
Deanna Rogers is currently working on the Experiential Education Project at SFU, a coordinator for SFU’s Change Lab, and creator of the current Greenest Cities Re:generation dialogues. She believes in fostering meaningful connections between academia, community and self; making space for education to be meaningful rather than routine. One of her current nagging questions is: what kind of future do we want to create and what is the role of the classroom in creating this?
Quinn Runkle
Quinn Runkle is in her third year of studies at UBC in the Faculty of Arts majoring in Geography with a concentration in Environment and Sustainability and minoring in Political Science. Originally from the Sunshine Coast, Quinn came to UBC to become involved in the strong sustainability community there and joined Common Energy UBC in her first year. Now, as Director for Common Energy, she has the pleasure of working on a broad range of sustainability initiatives on campus. Quinn hopes to one day see communities that have incorporated sustainable practices and lifestyles into everything and believes we are the generation to establish such a change!
Cameron Stiff
Cameron Stiff has organized extensively around climate change at the national and international levels, worked at Concordia University in Montreal on a variety of sustainability projects, led greening and sustainability projects in his neighbourhood, and co-created a social networking platform for social entrepreneurs. He loves woodworking, making music, growing and cooking food, yoga, hockey, and theatre, and travelling to new and exciting places.
Ashley Webster
Ashley Webster Ashley Webster is Development Manager for the goBEYOND Campus Climate Network. His work focuses on building community support for student sustainability initiatives. Ashley holds an undergraduate degree in Justice Studies from Royal Roads University and is completing a masters degree in Urban Studies at SFU. He research focuses on the role that university service-learning can play in urban sustainability. Ashley is an experienced manager having worked for ten years in software development and food manufacturing. He now directs his passion and experience to building a sustainable future for his son.
Celia White
Celia White is currently a Campus Food Strategy Group Coordinator at Vancouver Island University, working with the Sierra Youth Coalition to help get good food on campus. She is a fourth year student, working towards a self-sustainable livelihood with gardening, sourcing food locally, and hunting/gathering to use what the natural environment has to offer. Celia is currently enjoying a double major in Anthropology and Global Studies, and she is passionate about these subjects because they have taught her that alternative ways of living are possible, and that each unique worldview is an extraordinary expression of what it means to be human.
Angela Willock
Angela Willock is a thoughtful and lively UBC student sustainability leader who has a particular passion for personal sustainability and collective wellbeing. In the last year, she has successfully overcome her depression and anxiety issues of 5+ years, and is keen to support others in life, happiness and sustainability leadership. Among many pursuits, she is currently busy on goBEYOND’s Board of Directors and UBC’s AMS Sustainability Projects Fund Committee, as well as savoring the last few months of her “Sustainable Communities” degree, practicing yoga, reading post-apocalyptic science fiction, finding opportunities to be silly, and simply enjoying life with other people.
Anelyse Weiler
Anelyse Weiler,as the UBC Farm communications coordinator, gets to wear several different hats in engaging with the food system. A typical day might involve farming, community outreach, social media, hosting private events, and organizing skill-building workshops. Having graduated from UBC’s Global Resource Systems program, she has worked as a coordinator and TA for an undergraduate course focusing on food system sustainability and community-based research. Anelyse was also involved in the Save the UBC Farm campaign. She is excited about the possibility of campus food system strategies acting as sparks for civic engagement and experiential learning.