I am an environmental planner with 30 years of experience in public and Indigenous consultation, environmental impact assessment, and regional planning. I provide consulting services primarily to Indigenous communities and organizations to foster positive relationships and reconciliation between Indigenous people, governments, and industry.  

To date, I have served many Indigenous communities primarily in northern Ontario in building management capacity in strategic natural resource management and environmental assessment.  

After a few years running my own consultancy, my business partner Katherine and I established Odonaterra in 2017 in response to ineffective Indigenous participation in impact assessment processes. Our company works with clients, to address this challenge by contributing to and enabling community-based, Indigenous-led projects. The corporate vision is to advance reconciliation by building strong relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments, industry, and communities to enable shared decision-making in environmental management and land planning processes, rooted in Indigenous knowledge and western science.   Odonaterra’s work is grounded by an imperative to achieve reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples and our shared desire for empowered, sustainable, and healthy communities.   

The first 20 years of my career was spent at a large, multi-national consulting firm, where I built and led a group of human environment professionals in Alberta and Ontario. In this role, I gained many years of experience in managing the socio-cultural impact assessment and consultation components for resource and infrastructure development projects across Canada. Through this experience, I gained insight into how Indigenous communities could be more empowered in environmental assessment and in strengthening their role in land and resource stewardship.  This is my passion and the focus of my work.    

I am a Registered Professional Planner in Ontario, and a full member of the Canadian Institute of Planners. I served as President and Treasurer of the Ontario Association for Impact Assessment from 2012 to 2019. I taught a fourth-year Environmental Geography course part-time at the University of Ottawa in 2015 and 2016.  

I have a Master of Arts and an Honours Bachelor of Arts, both in Human Geography, from the University of Alberta and the University of Saskatchewan, respectively. I am a lifelong learner with training in public participation, project management, Indigenous cultural awareness, and negotiation. I continue to learn about Indigenous culture, language and protocols from Indigenous friends and Elders and appreciate their patience with me!  

I gratefully and respectfully acknowledge that I live, work, and play on the lands that have been home since time immemorial to the people of Nbisiing Anishinaabe (Nipissing) First Nation, Dokis First Nation and Antoine Nation in the Robinson Huron Treaty 1850 area (North Bay, Ontario). Miigwetch for sharing this land with me and my family.