Governing Council

Lorne Johnson

Advisor

Ivey Foundation, Schad Foundation

Lorne's Bio

Lorne has more than 20 years of experience in forging collaborative solutions to sustainability challenges in Canada. He has established a reputation as someone who brings enthusiasm, humour and a solid dose of pragmatism while getting things done.

Early in his career, Lorne played a leadership role in establishing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Canada including facilitating stakeholder negotiations for several regional standards processes, serving as a board member and chair, and acting as the Executive Director while overseeing the redesign of the organization’s business strategy and revenue model.

During his ten-year term with World Wildlife Fund Canada (1998 and 2007), Lorne established and led partnerships with several forest products companies. In his final years with WWF, he led the organization’s federal government relations efforts as their Ottawa Bureau Director focusing on climate change and oceans conservation.

Lorne has served in a variety of governance roles and was a founding director of the Clean Economy Fund (a focused collaborative of philanthropic foundations), the co-chair of the Cornerstone Standards Council and a member of the Governing Council of Efficiency Canada. He has headed up a number of organizations over the years including FSC Canada, Cornerstone Standards Council and the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement Secretariat.

In addition to his work with the Ivey Foundation, Lorne is an advisor to the conservation granting program of the Schad Foundation. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, Nathalie Chalifour, and two children. He is an avid painter, angler, hunter and paddler. He has aspirations of spending less time on conference calls and more time outdoors.

James Meadowcroft

Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration (Department of Political Science)

Carleton University

James' Bio

James Meadowcroft holds a Canada Research Chair in Governance for Sustainable Development. He is a Professor in both the Department of Political Science and the School of Public Policy and Administration. His research is focused on the ways governments are adjusting their practices and policies to cope with the emergence of problems of the environment and sustainable development. Meadowcroft has written widely on environmental politics and policy, democratic participation and deliberative democracy, national sustainable development strategies, and socio- technical transitions. Recent work focuses on energy and the transition to a low carbon society, and includes publications on carbon capture and storage (CCS), smart grids, the development of Ontario’s electricity system, the politics of socio-technical transitions, and negative carbon emissions. He co-edited the first international comparative study of the politics and policy of CCS (Caching the Carbon, Edward Elgar, 2009). Meadowcroft’s research has been funded by the UK ERSC, SSHRC, NSERC and Carbon Management Canada. He has supervised PhD students working on a variety of environment and energy-related topics including North American air pollution, the politics of biofuels, decarbonization pathways and energy futures.

Meadowcroft is currently co-lead, with Hayley Stevenson (University of Sheffield), on an international research project on Ecosystem services: valuing nature for sustainable development and a green economy, which is being funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Wellcome Trust and the VolkswagenStiftung. Another initiative is the ‘Taskforce on conceptual foundations of earth system governance’, an international research network (linked to the Earth System Governance project and Future Earth) which is interrogating key ideas that are being formulated to orient global governance of environmental issues (for example: ‘the Anthropocene’,  ‘sustainability science’ or ‘green democracy’). In collaboration with Peter Feindt (Wageningen) and Andreas Duit (Stockholm) he recently edited a special issue of Environmental Politics focused on the Environmental State. Meadowcroft has served as co-editor of the International Political Science Review (1999-2007) and Associate Editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies (2006-). He holds an honorary doctorate from the University Tampere in Finland.

Danielle Wensink

Director, Conservation and Energy Management

FortisBC

Danielle's Bio

With more than 25 years of experience in the energy industry, Danielle has held progressive leadership roles in the alternative energy and utility sectors. She began her career at Canadian fuel cell pioneer Ballard Power Systems, spending nearly a decade there in marketing and communications roles before joining Terasen Gas (now FortisBC).

Danielle’s initial roles at FortisBC were customer service focused. A particularly proud achievement was being on the leadership team that transitioned the company’s gas utility customer service delivery from an outsourced model to a new in-house, in-province department. Today, she is honoured to lead FortisBC’s award-winning Conservation and Energy Management team, delivering energy efficiency programs to electricity and gas customers across British Columbia. Energy efficiency has a long history at FortisBC and plays a key role in the company’s goal to reduce customers’ greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by the year 2030. Established in 2019, this 30BY30 milestone tracks FortisBC’s progress in support of decarbonization and the transition towards renewable energy. Danielle and her team are proud to contribute to this goal and have more than doubled gas energy savings and associated carbon emission reductions through their programs since 2018. They are passionate about enhancing energy efficiency and conservation awareness for FortisBC customers throughout the province. 

Raised in Southern Ontario, Danielle has lived in British Columbia for many years and considers both provinces home. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia. Outside of work, Danielle enjoys spending time with family and friends and keeping active with running, yoga and paddle boarding. Danielle lives in South Surrey with her husband and daughter.

Yasmin Abraham

Co-Founder

Kambo Energy Group

Yasmin's Bio

Yasmin is Co-Founder of Kambo Energy Group and the visionary behind Empower Me, Canada’s only energy and climate focused program designed for, and delivered by, members of underserved communities. Under Yasmin’s leadership, Kambo has become a leader and advocate for the inclusion of lower income families in climate policies, specifically advocating for supports for families experiencing energy poverty. Kambo’s Community Power division is dedicated exclusively to reducing energy poverty and improving housing conditions in Indigenous communities.

Yasmin is a leading expert in equity-based energy and climate programming, working with governments and utilities across Canada to design and deliver inclusive solutions.

Yasmin has assembled an employee roster representative of the communities they serve – 83% identify as visible minority, immigrant and/or multilingual, and 59% of employees are female.

Sandra Crocker

Associate Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives and Operations 

Carleton University

Sandra's Bio

Sandra Crocker was appointed to the newly created position of Associate Vice-President in May 2011. Reporting to the Vice-President (Research & International) she is part of the senior management group responsible for planning, developing and implementing a comprehensive research support strategy for Carleton.

Ms. Crocker has an accomplished career in research administration, most recently holding positions at McGill University as Assistant Vice-Principal (Strategic Planning and Partnerships) in the Office of the Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations). Prior to this she had a long career at Queen’s University culminating as Associate Vice-Principal (Research).

Sandra has served on the Board of Directors of the BioCap Canada Foundation, Insect Biotec Canada Inc., the Kingston Technology Council and the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Communications and Information Technology. She served as the President of the Kingston Technology Exchange Centre, a not-for-profit research incubator, and as Chair of the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network. More recently she has joined the Board of Directors of The Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information (CASRAI) as well as the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Institute, The Board of Directors of CARIC, the AIAC Technology and Innovation Committee and served on the Research Advisory Committee of CANARIE and as Chair of the National Research Council’s Construction Research Centre Advisory Board. She also volunteers as a Board member of the Ottawa Olde Forge Community Resource Centre.

Philippe Dunsky

President

Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors

Philippe's Bio

Philippe brings 25+ years of experience focused on a singular passion: helping his clients accelerate the clean energy transition. In the process, he has had the honour of leading a first-rate team of professionals, and the privilege of supporting forward-looking governments, utilities, businesses and non-profits throughout North America.

Philippe’s experience spans the full array of demand-side energy resources: from building efficiency to demand response, renewable energy, storage and clean mobility. He has designed plans and programs, developed leading-edge policies for governments and others, assessed the potential – technical, economic and achievable – of solutions across vast markets, and advised on evaluation, cost-effectiveness frameworks and a host of other issues. Among his more enjoyable endeavours: designing public policies and market strategies, brainstorming with the team on methodology, helping clients tackle complex problems, translating findings into a clear narrative, testifying at regulatory hearings, public speaking, and serving on the boards of organizations with a public purpose.

He is currently Co-chair of Efficiency Canada, among other positions.

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