I am an engineer and a development worker.
I am a dancer, an amateur masseuse, an avid traveler, a lover of good books and a yoga/running aspirant.
I am a dreamer, an idealist and a cynic.
I am a thinker with doing tendencies.
I grew up in Calgary, close to the Rocky Mountains and at the heart of Canada’s the oil industry. I spent my summers hiking and camping in these mountains, the rest of the time watching the city grow, traveling and asking questions.
I’m a Mechanical and Materials Engineer from the University of Western Ontario. While there, I joined Engineers Without Borders Canada as VP High School Outreach, a program that aims to involve and inspire young Canadians on issues of international development.
I pursued an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development at the University of Cambridge. I arrived excited about wind turbines; I left to pursue international development. (Although I am still very excited about wind turbines and renewable energy… I just got distracted.) I was excited about new ideas like globalization, systems thinking, organizational change, business with a social edge, appropriate design, and development. I became fascinated by the space between business and non-profits in development.
So, I joined EWB’s Agriculture Value Chains (AVC) team in Malawi, working in that space between the private sector and NGOs. Working to enable growth and access to more stable markets for smallholder farmers growing irish potatoes (a cash crop), educating my partners on the concepts of value chains and providing support for management processes around monitoring and evaluation.
This year, I am continuing my work with EWB and the AVC team in Ghana following an interesting opportunity on the ADVANCE project. Collaborating with EWB’s other teams, supporting the processes of organizational learning and knowledge management and working alongside field managers and to seek out opportunities to involve the private sector and smallholder farmers in opportunities for growth.
Those are the details, but I hope that you get to know me more through my writing and photography. Maybe we’ll even meet one day over a drink and some jazz.
