Staff & Board of Directors

All staff and board of directors can be reached at (647) 438 0038

Staff:

Carolyn joined Greenest City in 2009, returning to Canada after 2 ½ years living and working in the Middle East. Carolyn has over 7 years of experience working with NGOs in the Greater Toronto Area and in Calgary, developing and managing regional programs with a focus on community development through greening and gardening projects. Her past volunteer experience includes serving on the Board of Directors at Citizens’ Environment Watch (President) and leading Volunteer for Nature trips with the Federation of Ontario Naturalists.

Carolyn graduated with a BSc. (Biology) from Queen’s University, followed by an MES from York. Her agricultural roots go back to her youth in Southwestern Ontario, including summer jobs in the fields and with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture.

Emma is pleased to join Greenest City and be part of a program that connects youth with their food from seed to table. Emma completed a certificate in horticultural therapy and a six month internship at a therapeutic farm on Vancouver Island and views gardening as a vital tool for health promotion. At the City of Toronto, with the Children’s Garden and Exploring Toronto Programs, Emma supported community centres with the delivery of children’s environmental programming. Working for Street Kids International, Emma managed a youth community mapping initiative around hidden youth poverty in York Region. Emma also organized the ‘Get Honest: Our Youth Matter’ conference for the York Region Alliance to End Homelessness. Emma currently serves on the Board of Directors at the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association and the Julien Project, an establishing horticultural therapy organization, and has coordinated training opportunities for horticultural therapy students.

Emma first discovered the thrill of growing food with containers of tomato plants on a small balcony and even without land of her own, she has been growing ever since. To share her love of gardening, Emma has started as a Toronto Master Gardener in Training.

Robyn coordinates Greenest City’s programs for young people, including Growing the Future, Youth Community Kitchen, and a new children’s program. She believes that growing and preparing food connects us with the earth, with our food system, and with one another, helping to improve health and build community.

Robyn’s background includes education in a variety of contexts, work on organic farms, and curriculum development. She has an MS in Learning, Teaching, and Social Policy from Cornell University. Robyn began gardening at the age of three, planting peas (not in straight rows) in her grandparents’ garden, and has always loved good food.

Michael Haywood, a native of the bright and sunny island of Jamaica, joined Greenest City in the fall of 2011. Fresh and full of the warm Caribbean culture, he has been volunteering in Toronto with a number of social service agencies and community groups in the east end. Through this work, he has helped with a wide variety of tasks, including helping in the kitchen preparing a range of dishes, and has found that volunteering has given him a strong introduction to Toronto’s vast multicultural arena.

Michael’s background is in the area of customer service, giving him the necessary skills to take on a variety of administrative, communications and programming tasks within the Greenest City community.

Board of Directors:

Stephan is an IT Manager with experience in Management, Project Management and Business Analysis. He has worked for several small software companies developing and implementing workflow, audit, and compliance solutions for large banks, investment banks, and insurance companies in the United States and Canada. His IT experience builds on his previous experience as a Management Consultant for companies such as Deloitte and niche consulting companies. Stephan has an MBA from the Schulich School of Business and a Bachelors from McGill University.

With a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Ruth’s expertise lies in understanding and implementing growth from an environmental systems perspective. Her experience ranges from residential naturalization and architectural construction, to large parks and urban design, to environmental planning projects at the watershed scale. She also has a keen interest in stakeholder communication and the charette process.

As well as operating her own design practice, Ruth works with Studio LAB and the Toronto Economic Development Corporation. In concert with her Greenest City Board duties she volunteers with the Pediatric Group of Ontario, Design Initiative with Youth, and Water for Humanity.

Carl is a management associate in the Management Rotational Leadership Program at the TD Bank Financial Group. Carl is currently in his second rotation at TD Asset Management in active fixed income investing. Carl has nine years of experience in financial services and has worked in: Investment Banking focusing on Alternative Energy, Finance/Accounting and Business Development/Mergers & Acquisitions for a U.S. mid-major oil firm focusing on Alternative Energy. Carl has recently moved back to Toronto after spending six years in New York City working on Wall Street as well as getting a MBA from Columbia Business School. Carl is also a holder of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Kimberley is a lawyer with an LLB from Queen's University and an honours B.Sc. in the Cooperative Environmental Science Program from the University of Waterloo. She has experience in corporate litigation and her environmental legal practice included providing legal regulatory advice, conducting environmental due diligence reviews of corporate transactions and defending prosecutions for environmental offences. During her legal studies, Kimberley was active in organizing conferences, participating in the Pro Bono Students Canada program working with non-profit organizations such as Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, and acting as VP Administrative of the Law Students’ Society. She brings a breadth of people skills and legal knowledge to the Board.

Karin is a Client Executive in the telecommunications industry at IBM where she has worked for 13 years holding positions in finance and in relationship sales. She attained her degree in Business Administration at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. She has served on the IBM Canada Women’s Leadership Council and the IBM Employees Charitable Fund Campaign. Karin ran as an NDP candidate in the 2007 Ontario provincial election and participates in the Eglinton-Lawrence NDP Riding Association. Karin has been passionate about nature since her childhood on the Niagara Escarpment and became involved in environmental issues since she started university, organizing two annual fundraising events to raise awareness and money for Friends of the Earth.

She plans to renovate her home one day to have a carbon neutral footprint. She is an arts and theatre enthusiast, as well as a passionate, if not talented, gardener.

Sally Miller holds a MA and PhD from Cornell University, as well as an MES from York University. She has worked in co-op management and co-op development for almost twenty years both in Canada and in the U.S. She has extensive experience as a consultant and manager in a variety of organic and natural food and agriculture co-operatives and enterprises, including Organic Meadow (OntarBio Organic Farmers’ Co-operative), the Ontario Natural Food Co-operative and the Finger Lakes Organic Growers’ Co-operative in New York.

In 2006, she co-founded the Fourth Pig Worker Co-op, a co-op dedicated to the design and installation of alternative energy, and to natural home-building. Most recently she has been hard at work with the West End Food Co-op in Parkdale-High Park to develop one of Ontario’s first multi-stakeholder food co-operatives. In 2008, Sally published a book on innovative approaches to achieving a more equitable and sustainable food system (Edible Action, Fernwood Publishing, 2008).

Sonia has eight years experience in the environmental sector in various leadership roles. She is currently the Diversity Project Manager at the Sustainability Network, where she leads the Environment & Diversity Project, an exciting initiative designed to help the Ontario environmental NGO community consider, develop and implement strategies to better reflect and engage under-represented communities.

Sonia is passionate about building long-term capacity in the environmental sector and is also a co-leader for Young Conservation Professionals, a development program based at the University of Guelph for emerging environmental leaders. She has also worked with Citizens’ Environment Watch and Environmental Defence, and has been an advisor to the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation. In addition to sitting on the board of Greenest City, she is also a director for the North York Seniors Centre.

Sonia holds a B.Sc. in Biology from the University of Waterloo and a post-graduate certificate in Environmental Control from Sheridan College.

Leslie has a Doctorate in Linguistics from McGill University. She worked in the Canadian non-profit sector for fifteen years, specializing in youth engagement, cross-cultural communication, and international development. As a program manager she established partnerships with teachers and community groups across Canada and developed overseas experiential learning and cross-cultural programming for youth. Now an independent writer, editor and researcher based in Toronto, Leslie works with a wide variety of organizations on communications materials. She has travelled extensively and has lived, worked, and studied in North America and Europe.

Ken grew up in Nova Scotia and spent most of his summers working in farming communities - planting, raising livestock, harvesting and beekeeping. Ken graduated from Dalhousie University in 1988 with a B.Sc. in biology with a specialty in Ecology.

Ken has over 20 years of management experience in the IT industry in supply chain management, Sales and Marketing and in Offering Development. He has been involved in company sponsored charity and fund raising activities his entire career and has been management sponsor of IBM Green Teams for over 10 years.

Hyun Rioux is an Account Executive in the telecommunications industry. She is a graduate from the University of Waterloo with an honours degree in Business Economics and Biology. She brings over 13 years of sales and consulting experience to Greenest City.

She is also a visual artist and avid gardener hoping to bring about true environmental sustainability to Toronto.