Dr. Catherine Potvin is Professor of Biology at McGill University, Associate Staff Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and member of the Royal Society of Canada. She is a forest ecologist and specialist in global environmental change, including climate change and biodiversity loss. Her academic training includes a PhD from Duke University in plant ecology and postdoctoral studies in statistics at Université de Montréal. Her current research is of an interdisciplinary nature and includes socio-economic and policy aspects of land use changes. Dr. Potvin has been working in Panama since 1993 on forest conservation and carbon cycling, often in close collaboration with farmers and Indigenous peoples. She has published over 100 scientific papers in international scientific journals. Dr. Potvin has actively engaged in policymaking, serving as Panama’s negotiator at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change between 2005 and 2011. In 2012, she received the Royal Society of Canada’s Miroslaw Romanowski Medal, in recognition of her exceptional contribution for important improvements to the quality of an ecosystem in all aspects brought about by scientific means. Dr. Potvin is the first woman to receive this prize, which rewards, inter alia, her exceptional contribution to the development of the proposal on the Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) at the international level. In the wake of the 150^th anniversary of the Charlottetown Conference, Dr. Potvin was selected by “A Bold Vision” as one of 23 women visionaries for the future of Canada.

Contact: catherine.potvin@mcgill.ca

Dr. Irena Creed is Executive Director of the School of Environment & Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan, and was the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Watershed Sciences until June 2017. Dr. Creed is an ecosystem scientist. She works on developing conceptual models, as well as the scientific and practical tools needed to challenge these models and determine the consequences of human modification on Earth. Dr. Creed’s research group, together with collaborators from government, industry and an international network of scientists, studies the impacts of global change (climate change, atmospheric pollution, and land use/land cover change) on ecosystem structure, function and services.

Contact: irena.creed@usask.ca

Communications Committee

Dr. Howard Ramos is Professor of Sociology at Dalhousie University and Associate Dean of Research for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (as of July  1st, 2016). He completed his PhD at McGill University. His research focuses on issues of social justice and he has published on NGO advocacy, environmental advocacy, environmental harms, agenda-setting, public policy, and media. His research also looks at a wide range of other issues including Indigenous mobilization, Indigenous-Settler relations, race and racialization, non-economic element of immigration, and perceptions of change in Atlantic Canadian cities. He has published three books and over 40 research articles, book chapters, and reports. He often works with NGOs, communities and policy makers and likewise regularly contributes to public debates in English and French television, radio, and newspapers.

Contact: Howard.Ramos@Dal.Ca

Dr. Mark Stoddart is Professor of Sociology at Memorial University. His research draws attention to three sets of linkages. First, it highlights the ways in which local communities and environments are embedded within and shaped by large-scale systems of media communication, tourism mobility, oil extraction, and climate change policy debate. Second, it demonstrates how social practices and discourses related to tourism and recreation are intimately bound up with technologies and nature. Third, it traces connections between cultural understandings of nature, economic transformation, and environmental politics.

Contact: mstoddart@mun.ca

Dr. Patrick McCurdyAssociate Professor in the Department of Communication at University of Ottawa. Drawing from media and communication, journalism as well as social movement scholarship, Professor McCurdy’s research and teaching is interested in media as a site and source of social struggle. His research has studied the mainstream and social media movement strategies of social movements including the global justice movement and the Occupy movement. He has also examined the implications of living in a media saturated and media event oriented society covering topics ranging from WikiLeaks to the rise and consequences of celebrity activism.

Contact:Patrick.McCurdy@uottawa.ca

Dr. Shauna Sylvester is Director of Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue and the Executive Director of the SFU Public Square—a signature project of SFU’s commitment to engagement which convenes serious and productive dialogues on issues of public concern to Canadians. Shauna is a skilled facilitator, social entrepreneur and commentator on international issues.  She has led several dialogues on density, business development, transportation and energy and she served as the lead facilitator for the Mayor’s Task Force on Affordable Housing in Vancouver.

Contact: shauna_sylvester@sfu.ca

Support

Divya Sharma is the Administrator for Sustainable Canada Dialogues and Research Assistant for the Neotropical Ecology—Science for Empowerment Lab at McGill University. She is Project Coordinator of Acting on Climate Change: Indigenous Innovations, a project of Dr. Potvin’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Fellowship. She completed her Master’s in the Neotropical Ecology Lab, where she studied social-ecological landscapes development, using deforestation in an Indigenous Emberá community of Panama as a case study.