PEOPLE

Lindsay (she/her) is an applied and action researcher, civil servant, and parent grateful to be living in xwesam, shíshálh swiya (also known as Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast). She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia, where she is researching and teaching about transformative innovation toward social and ecological justice on a variety of initiatives. Lindsay also leads the Solutions Lab at the City of Vancouver – a place where breakthrough, transformative solutions to some of the city’s most complex problems are being sought. She’s worked on a variety of exciting projects with the city over her 10 year tenure, including leading the planning and public engagement process for the award-winning Greenest City Action Plan.

Drawing on her background in community planning, systemic design, action research and transformative innovation in the public sector, Lily’s work focuses on designing spaces of dialogue, learning, and co-creation for practitioners to become entangled in our communities' pressing complex challenges and imagine possible ways beyond them. For ten years she has worked at the intersection of culture, ecology and community development, designing and leading community engagement, participatory action research, and transformative learning experiences in the public, academic and non-profit sectors. 

Moura was the founding Director pro tem of the School which houses the Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs.  Moura’s interests lie in rethinking, refining and rebuilding collaborative spaces at the intersections of academia, government, business and civil society.  Her teaching and research focus is on strategic design, designed leadership and an emerging Policy Studio that helps students and multi-sectoral organizations learn to use design processes and tools. Moura has been Deputy Minister of the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education, B.C. Commissioner of Pacific Coast Collaborative, Dean of UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and Associate VP, Academic Programs at UBC Okanagan.

Her book, Designed Leadership, was published by Columbia University Press in July 2017.  

The thing that Moura loves most about Slab CoP is the sense of community and support that has formed around the core participants, and the energy and enthusiasm for making change in the way of working at the City of Vancouver that they share. Her favourite tool is Assumption Dumption because it is “multivalent.” It is so useful in revealing biases and helping us to know what we don’t know, and it also can be used as an idea generating technique — reversing assumptions can be creative.

Brittany supports a variety of park planning projects, and brings a systems-lens and collaborative, playful, and generative approach to problem solving in her work. Brittany centers values of compassion, reciprocity, curiosity, and transformative learning. She loves that the CoP is a brave space to take a breath and actively tune-in to how our work, relationships, and daily practices may be perpetuating or shifting certain systems and values.

The perspectives, tools and network of people that the CoP weaves together is a collective embrace of complexity to find new solutions to our most complex and urgent challenges. One of her favourite tools is Unicorns + Horses. It speaks to her as it’s a playful tool that can nudge ourselves out of status-quo thinking in the public sector and focuses on (re)imagining what is possible in a creative, tangible way.

Lanny is a proud mother of four kids, and she is passionate about community development. She is committed to working with non-profit sector partners and equity seeking communities when coordinating and implementing research and engagement projects that focus on complex social issues. She is a board member of the Students Commission of Canada where she advocates and supports initiatives that promote the participation rights of children and youth and the implementation of Article 12 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Canada and internationally. Lanny recently completed her master’s degree in community development, researching factors that build capacity and enable coordination in the non-profit sector. She loves SLab tools that deal with systems work.

Leslie has been supporting the implementation of the Greenest City Action Plan since its adoption and is currently leading the City’s work on exploring how collaborative leadership can help us achieve collective action in service of the climate emergency. Her interest in personal development, design thinking and innovation tools has led her to the Solution’s Lab Community of Practice. Leslie is proud to be contributing to the creation of a space to foster social innovation, public sector change and collaboration.

Her favourite tool is the iceberg model because it really helps to uncover the underlying beliefs and models that contribute to a single outcome, thereby allowing you to go deeper, to the root of the issue, and identify the parts of the system you may be able to influence. 

Mumbi is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Social Planner in the Social Policy Division at the City of Vancouver. She has worked on grassroots social and environmental justice organizing, anti-racist education and cross-cultural collaboration with immigrant and other communities across North America. Mumbi’s research focuses on the uptake of sustainability in higher education policy and practice, examining roles of various actors, including historically marginalized groups in the enactment of sustainability. At the City of Vancouver, she works to imagine how municipal governments can address the challenges of rising social and environmental inequities. Mumbi is looking forward to learning how to create compassionate spaces for imagining new possibilities and ways of relating to one another.

Sanmini is a graduate student at UBC, and supported the 2019 CoP through communications, observation of the CoP participants, data entry and assistance with daily administrative tasks. What she loved most about the CoP was its multidisciplinary perspective. It brought together diverse teams working on different issues while introducing concepts applicable to all. Her favourite techniques are Decolonization and Equity. Sanmini thinks that the use of these theories and discussions surrounding their implementation should occur more often, especially in spaces that can have a positive impact. 

Rob is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC). His primary area of research studies meaningful articulations between classrooms and communities, especially as influenced by the social philosophies of pragmatism. A book on the topic was published in 2014. Recent publications include “Adaptive Education Applied to Higher Education for Sustainability” (International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education); “Conceptions of Sustainability within the Redesigned K-12 Curriculum in British Columbia, Canada: Mapping a Disputed Terrain” (Journal of Sustainability Education) and; “Green jobs for the disadvantaged: an analysis of government policies in British Columbia” (Journal of Environmental Planning and Management). Since 2016, he has researched and designed the first ever sustainability cohort in the teacher education program in UBC and also launched a Masters’ program in Education for Sustainability, which partners with the City of Vancouver on the implementation of sustainability, health, housing and planning policy.

Maggie is the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Community Planning (ICP) master’s concentration at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP). Maggie is a community-engaged scholar who seeks to advance a better understanding of Indigenous sovereignty as it is expressed outside the Canadian courts. Her current research projects and teaching focus on Indigenous planning, Indigenous-state relations and decolonization efforts happening within Canadian cities. Maggie was born and raised in northern Ontario and is of mixed ancestry. She is Italian, French and German from her Mother’s side and a status member of Wikwemikoong Unceded Territory from her Father’s side. Maggie is most looking forward to learning about equity and decolonization efforts happening at different scales in several cities across Canada.

Peyvand is a PhD Candidate at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and architect. Peyvand's research investigates the governance dynamics within collaborative urban experimentations in Canadian cities. Her current research projects focus on urban socio-environmental experimentations, sustainable, affordable housing in Canada, and transformative impacts and learning. Prior to joining SCARP, Peyvand completed a Master's degree in architecture, sustainable design and worked in urban sustainability and the green building sector in the United States. Peyvand is a passionate learner about effectively designing and implementing just sustainability transition processes to achieve transformative impacts and foster learning within collaborative, multi-actor contexts.

Kyla Pascal is a Métis, Black woman born and raised in Amiskwaciwâskahikan ᐊᒥᐢᑲᐧᒋᐋᐧᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Edmonton, Alberta). Over the years Kyla has worked with a number of non-profit organizations focusing on anti-oppression, advocacy, and community-building. Her experiences and interests are centred around Indigenous solidarity, sustainability, community health, and food justice. The goal of her work is to build more resilient, just, and healthier communities. She currently works at Indigenous Climate Action, is a member of the Indigenous art collective, nipahimiw, and is a first-year graduate student with the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. She is most excited about/looking forward to seeing the various approaches that the different cities apply to the learning journey.