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Coordinator
Oliver Lane
Oliver brings several years of experience in the non-profit sector. Before arriving in Vancouver in 2008, he worked for several organizations in his home country, Argentina, in the fields of environmental education, integrated water management, poverty reduction and micro-finance. Oliver holds a BA (Hons) in Business Economics and a Diploma in Non-Profit Organization Management, and recently obtained a Masters degree in Sustainability Planning at the University of British Columbia. He is very interested in exploring the challenges and opportunities related to behavioral change when implementing sustainability.
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School Gardens Coordinator
Catriona Gordon
Catriona joined SPEC in the spring of 2009 as the School Gardens Coordinator. Her Master’s degree in Environmental Studies and Botany from the University of Toronto took her to the cloud forests of Venezuela where she studied the effects of air pollution and acid fog on plants. Catriona is passionate about environmental education and organic gardening and loves to enthuse kids about the amazing world of plants. She is an avid gardener, and loves to grow anything edible. She also works as a scientist-in-residence with the Vancouver School Board.
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Outreach and Project Facilitator
Marnie Newell
Marnie completed both a B.A. in Humanities and Science and a Bachelor of Education at UBC. She brings with her experience in environmental and science education. She enjoys sharing her passion for urban agriculture, ecology and sustainable living through workshops and public outreach and works to support SPEC's Food, Waste and Land & Water Committee projects. Marnie prefers spending time in the garden, discussing ways we can reduce our impact on the planet, preserving food, admiring biodiversity, biking around the city and comparing the French and English words for plants. She is also a public school teacher.
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Garden Manager and Urban Farmer Field School Coordinator
Mik Turje
Mik is a farmer, educator and community organizer. Before working for SPEC, Mik spent four years managing both rural and urban farms, completed a Bachelors degree in Social Work at the University of Victoria, and worked with a Community Food Centre in Toronto. Mik is particularly interested in building community capacity for food production, the confluence of farming and anti-poverty work, and the therapeutic benefits of horticulture.
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Board of Directors
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President
Rob Baxter
Rob Baxter is a co-founder and a director of the Vancouver Renewable Energy Cooperative. Prior to that he ran his own business consulting firm. He teaches a course in renewable energy for Langara College Continuing Studies. He has been interviewed by CBC radio, CBC TV and Global TV on sustainability issues. He has also published articles and photographs on environmental issues.
As a community organizer he has served on the Board of People for Lake Whatcom and initiated a campaign that successfully lobbied the B.C. Cancer Society to promote more sustainable transportation. He has a MBA from the University of Western Ontario.
Rob has been car-free for two years and uses a bike as his main form of transportation. He has a worm composter and carries a reusable coffee mug with him.
Rob is SPEC's Energy Committee Chair and Transportation specialist.
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Vice President
Tara Moreau
Tara became an environmentalist after attending a children’s environmental camp in Northern Ontario. She has been involved with researching and promoting sustainable food systems since 2002. Tara recently completed a PhD in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia where she evaluated alternative pest controls for whiteflies in commercial greenhouses. She obtained a MSc. from Dalhousie University and the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada (OACC) and has worked as an organic agriculture consultant with United Nations-Food and Agriculture Organization (UN-FAO). Tara has been a SPEC board member since 2006 and is Co-Chair of SPEC’s Food Committee. She is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow in a collaborative project between UBC and Kwantlen Polytechnic University where she is assessing regional greenhouse gas fluxes in urban and peri-urban agricultural systems to identify methods of reducing emissions, estimating GHGs and sequestering carbon.
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Vice President
Carole Christopher
Carole has a doctorate in Nutrition with particular focus on nutritional ecology and food policy. She has developed and taught university courses, was a consultant to the US Federal Trade Commission's attempt to regulate food advertising to children, and has over 25 years experience as an activist in food and environmental issues. Carole speaks frequently on the role of technology and marketing in creating an industrial food system that is nutritionally hazardous and ecologically unsustainable. She advocates supporting regional and urban agriculture by eating locally and seasonably whenever possible and is an avid organic gardener and seed saver. Carole is Co-Chair of SPEC's Food Committee.
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Secretary
Tova Plashkes
Tova has a BSc in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario and a Masters in Physiotherapy from McMaster University. She works at Vancouver General Hospital as a clinician and at UBC as a researcher. In 2008, she volunteered in Central America, where she worked with Doctors for Global Health focusing on health promotion and rehabilitation. She brings a passion for grass roots community building and advocacy to the SPEC team. In her spare time, you can find her running, biking, hiking, skiing and sailing around the beautiful roads, slopes and shores of BC.
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Treasurer
Adam Fontana
Adam is a Chartered Accountant with a background in finance and economics. Having worked for the past several years in public practice accounting Adam brings in-depth knowledge of financial reporting standards, cost accounting, financial projecting, and budgeting to SPEC’s Board. Adam also holds a BA in Geography and a Diploma in Accounting both obtained from the University of British Columbia. Adam lives in Vancouver with his partner Maria and can be found enjoying the great BC outdoors year round.
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Director
Ross Moster
Ross has a thirty-five year background in small business, food, cooperatives, social and environmental activism, and sustainable, resilient community building. He is engaged in numerous projects through Village Vancouver (Vancouver's Transition Town initiative), which he founded, and is a member of the Car Free Vancouver, NOW BC Co-op, and IMAPON boards and the Vancouver Food Policy Council. He is involved with several other initiatives, including SFU's Local Food Project advisory committee, Vancouver's Peak Oil Executive, Salon d'Elan Vital (co-founder), the Westside Food Security Collaborative, and Langara College’s Summer School on Building Community. He is particularly passionate about fostering collaboration through creating neighbourhood “villages” and neighbourhood food growing/sharing networks; this is reflected in Welcome to Village Vancouver articles in Common Ground magazine. Ross served as GM of an organic food co-op for 20 years, and on the boards of L.A. EcoVillage and different California cooperative organizations for many years. In the 70's, he published the L.A. People's Yellow Pages, a social change/social service resource directory. He lives in Vancouver with his wife Laura Lee and their cat Attila, and relishes ties to family and community.
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Director
Léane de Laigue
Léane first discovered SPEC as an Environmental Studies high school teacher; she and her students were able to create a beautiful school garden with SPEC’s help. She knows firsthand the value of SPEC’s work and was excited to join the Board in 2010.
Léane holds an Undergraduate degree in Humanities from France and an MBA from the US, and worked as a marketing manager in England for 4 years. She then decided to focus on the environmental field, earning a B Ed from UBC, teaching Environmental Studies for 3 years, and working for the David Suzuki Foundation for a year.
She is currently doing a Master’s in Environment and Management and a Certificate in Dialogue and Civic Engagement. She loves the great outdoors and tries to get outside as much as she can! Léane is SPEC's Communications Committee Chair
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Director
Sara Blenkhorn
Sara has been engaging with organizations and individuals around sustainability and CSR Plans for over a decade. She brings cross cultural experience and expertise in sustainability planning, facilitation and engagement strategies. She believes that businesses are societies' most influential forces for social change and is committed to helping them play a leadership role in shaping our future. Sara holds a Masters degree in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability, and has served as an advisor for The Natural Step International. Her experience working with a wide range of organizations all over the world has given her a diverse set of skills and tools to help organizations take the leap from good intentions to long term sustainable performance. Sara’s passion for connectivity has her spending time in the ocean or on the mountains, playing sports, doing yoga, and getting really excited about anything that involves collaboration and community and engaging new people around topics of meaning. She has been on the SPEC board for 6 years and loves connecting the theory to the practical in her on back yard.
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Director
Barry Warren
Barry joined SPEC as an intern for the summer of 2011. He brings with him a passion for environmental education and building sustainable communities. Barry has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria and is currently studying Sustainable Resource Management at BCIT. He enjoys spending his free time playing piano and guitar with friends or reading by the beach.
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Director
Matthew Unger
Matthew has a professional background in financial and business consulting as well as working closely with non profits as both a volunteer and strategist. Raised on a small farm in the prairies Matthew now owns a business in Vancouver dedicated to converting urban waste into soil for urban food production. Before working with SPEC Matthew devoted his time to beach, forest and highway waste pickup campaigns and events, tree planting programs and advocacy for The Wilderness Zone on the Manitoba/Ontario border. After spending time working on the Pacific Ocean to conduct research on marine plastics, deep sea aquatic life and white sharks Matthew is now working with SPEC to develop an effective Land & Water conservation campaign here in Vancouver.
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Director
Rowena Anderson
Rowena started her own fundraising consulting firm in 2010. She specializes in working with smaller grassroots organizations to build their capacity to raise more money. Rowena holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo and a Master of Applied Science in the Department of Mining and Mineral Process Engineering from UBC. When she is not consulting you will find Rowena teaching fundraising related courses at BCIT or else volunteering for a handful of organizations that are near and dear to her heart.
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2060-B Pine Street Vancouver BC V6J 4P8 | tel: 604-736-7732 | www.spec.bc.ca | admin@spec.bc.ca
