Board of Directors

Patrick Robertson, current Chair of the C2C Education Network, is a teacher educator in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, where he co-leads the Education for Sustainability teacher education cohort. He also leads Syncollab Strategies, a consulting collaborative in B.C. working with diverse local, provincial and national clients and partners. Patrick serves as a director or advisor for various other provincial and national organizations focused on sustainability, climate justice, teacher education, community engagement, and educational transformation.

Rebecca has had a longstanding commitment to not-for-profit leadership and board governance and has served as volunteer director and executive for multiple community organizations including S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Social Services, Minerva Foundation of BC, Leadership Vancouver, Mount Pleasant Family Centre, Canadian Club and as Regional Chair of the BC Committee for the 2015 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference. She specializes in organizational culture and leadership development, facilitation of strategic communications and change management. Recently, she has served as Chief Operating Officer of Reconciliation Canada. As a Certified Association Executive, her Executive Director roles have included Family Services of Greater Vancouver Foundation and Community Volunteer Connections. Mother of three amazing humans that trail run, camp, swim, build stuff, de-construct stuff, grow stuff in the veg garden – there is no end to the playful adventures in Nature that the family shares.

Nick lives, works, and adventures on the shores of the Salish Sea. He teaches with the Vancouver School Board’s TREK Outdoor Education Program. He is a board member of EEPSA, C2C, OCC, and TMO. He worked on the coordinator team for seven summers with the Pearson Seminar on Youth Leadership. For thirteen spring and fall seasons, he taught in the outdoor classroom of Howe Sound with Sea to Sky Outdoor School, where he was a Program Director and well known for his bioregional comedy routines. He has spent a total of six months as the Ecoguardian on Race Rocks Ecological Reserve.

Cheryl Lenardon is Assistant Superintendent in the beautiful Cariboo-Chilcotin School District. She is passionate about growing place-based learning and seeing students and staff realize the many benefits of taking learning outdoors.

Bruce is a proud husband, father and teacher. He lives, works, plays and learns on the shared traditional territories of the Coast Salish First Nations. Bruce grew up in Metro Vancouver, Ethiopia and Malaysia. He recognized at an early age the privilege and quality of life enjoyed in our region and how it is often taken for granted. Bruce brings his passion for sustainability, education, collaboration and leadership to his ongoing work with Metro Vancouver School and Youth Leadership Programs. These programs inspire and equip K-12 teachers, students and high school youth leaders to make sustainability personal, local, action-oriented and fun through engaging and curriculum-connected field trips and facility tours, teaching and learning resources, teacher professional development and youth leadership programs.

Duncan Whittick is based out of Invermere in the traditional territory of the Ktunaxa and Secwepemc (Shuswap). He has been CBEEN’s Executive Director since 2011, and enjoys connecting the dots between people and organizations, looking for pathways to positive systemic change, and finding ways we can all work better, together. Duncan is on the board for C2C and is the Co-coordinator for the Kootenay-Boundary Environmental Education (KBEE) Initiative and the Executive Director of Canada’s Non-profit Outdoor Learning Store. In 2018 he was the recipient of the Canadian Environmental Education ‘Outstanding Individual in an Organization’ Award.

Vanessa is currently a Gr.3 teacher in Prince George, a city located in Central BC within the territory of the Lheidli T'enneh. She graduated in 2013 from the Education program at Vancouver Island University. Since then she has taught from K - 12, from Port Hardy to Egypt and am almost done her Master of Arts in Environmental Education and Communication from Royal Roads University.

Kate Henderson is a knowledgeable secondary teacher with extensive experience creating and managing partner relationships, and program development and delivery. Kate is a project coordinator for the Ocean Decade Collaborative Center of the Northeast Pacific. Growing up on BC’s Sunshine Coast gave Kate an early passion for getting outside to explore the intertidal zone. Since then she has blended her undergraduate studies in biology with 20 years experience in both formal and informal education, including 15 years developing, managing and promoting education and outreach programs at Vancouver’s science centre, Science World.

Jade is a Physical Geographer, Environmental Educator, Outdoor Instructor and Guide based in Revelstoke, BC. Originally from the UK, she has called the traditional and unceded territories of the Sinixt, the Ktunaxa, the Secwepemc and the Okanagan Syilx home since 2016. Jade has been designing and delivering environmental education programs for over fifteen years, across four continents and seven countries. She runs Outreach and Events for the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network and the Outdoor Learning Store alongside her own educational consultancy 'Stoked on Science'. A passionate hiker, biker, climber and skier, sharing a passion for the outdoors whilst educating about science, interconnecting natural systems and the general wonder of the world around us is her number one priority. When she's not thinking and acting on ways to engage youth with the outdoors, you can find her pondering the universe, life and everything in it alongside the magical riverbanks of the Sn̓x̌ʷn̓tkʷítkʷ 'Swift River' otherwise known as the Columbia with her husband and little Jack Russell, Otis.

Selina Metcalfe (BA, BEd, MEd) Selina Metcalfe discovered her love of outdoor learning while working in summer camps in the Howe Sound, teaching backcountry leadership skills to street-affected youth. As a secondary English and Social Studies teacher in the Surrey School District for over twenty years, she has had a passion for connecting students to the places that inform them, and aspired to use the curriculum to help students understand their relationship to the land. Selina was a Faculty Associate for the SEEDs (Sustainability Education in an Environment of Diversity) module of PDP at SFU while pursuing her Masters in Curriculum and Implementation. As president of EEPSA for ten years, she established Local Chapters across the province and increased the geographic diversity of EEPSA’s membership. She recently left the Salish Sea to live in the West Kootenays as the District Vice-Principal of Indigenous Education in the Kootenay-Columbia school district, and work collaboratively with other local districts on the KBEE initiative. Selina and her family currently live in an old house on a hill in Rossland.

Dayna is a mother, settler, activist, and Co-Executive Director of Be The Change Earth Alliance, an eco-social justice education organization focused on empowering youth to take action on the important issues of our time. Prior to joining the team at Be The Change, she was a public school teacher in so-called Kelowna, BC, where she supported students in being active changemakers. She has a Masters of Science in Environmental Practice with a focus on climate change psychology and education. Dayna envisions education as an opportunity to address the systems of oppression that uphold much of our current world.

Ryan Barfoot (@rybarfoot) completed his Bachelor of Education specializing in Outdoor and Experiential Learning at Queens University and a M.Ed. in Curriculum Development and Implementation at Simon Fraser University. His research interests include transformative education, contemporary Rites of Passage, place-based and ecological learning environments. Ryan has worked with Parks Canada, BC Parks, the National Forest Service and the National Parks Service before building the Outdoor & Ecological Learning department for the Powell River School District. With a passion for connecting people to their eartly home, he puts his heart and soul into all he does. Ryan is guided by his belief that a better world is possible and relentlessly endeavours to be a net benefit to this world. He, his wife Karin and children Wren and Rio currently live in the old Townsite (Powell River) on the Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. You can find more about his work here: https://integralearning.org/

Colin Harris is the founder and executive director of Take Me Outside. He initiated the organization by running 7,600 km across Canada over 9 months, going into 80 schools across the country and engaging 20,000 students in the conversation of their time spent in front of screens compared to their time spent outside, being active and connecting to nature. Colin has been immersed in the field of outdoor/environmental education for over 15 years. He has completed a Master’s of Environmental Education and Communication through Royal Roads University and is pursuing a PhD in Educational Research through the University of Calgary.

Jennie King is an astronomer by training and STEAM educator by practice, Jennie aims to share the beauty and wonder of the universe with everyone she meets. She is currently the Manager of Educator Programs at Science World, which is located on the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples: the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. Drawing upon her background as a K-12 science educator and participation in volunteer initiatives such as NASA- JPL's Solar System Ambassador Program, Jennie works to facilitate meaningful connections between learners and our world-- within local communities and the wider expanse of the cosmos.

Mia lives in Revelstoke, on the traditional lands of the Sinixt, the Ktunaxa, the Secwepemc, and the Syilx. With over 15 years as a community environmental educator and program manager, she has worked at the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network (CBEEN) for over five years, managing the Wild Voices for Kids program, a unique program in the Columbia Basin that connects classrooms to communities through local specialists that develop programs connected to the local environment and tailored to their area of expertise and passion.

A passion for the wilderness and a gift for teaching have drawn Monica into the field of environmental education where she has worked both inside and outside the classroom. From guiding mountaineering trips in the Coast Mountains for Outward Bound to designing workshops on sustainability for the Pearson Seminar on Youth Leadership, to describing the life cycle of the spawning salmon at Kokanee Creek Provincial Park, Monica has spent the last 15 years developing and delivering educational programs that inspire the next generation of stewards of the Earth. Currently, she and her team of educators deliver BC curriculum-linked programs to over 3,000 kids a year throughout the Columbia Basin.

Since 1979 Victor has spent a lifetime working in the field of place and nature-based experiential learning. Victor spent 28 years at the NV Outdoor School (Cheakamus Centre) most of that time as the teaching Principal co-Administrator. Since retiring from full-time in 2016 Victor has pursued adjunct work as a Graduate Diploma in Education - Mentor and Sessional Instructor at SFU and Faculty Advisor with the Education for Sustainability cohort at UBC. Victor has been a board member, as well as, helped establish and support a number of not-for-profits. At present Victor’s most active efforts are further enhancing the capacity building goals of the Pacific Foundation Understanding Nature Society that he helped found and pursuing a PhD.