Affiliated researchers

Erin Alexiuk

PhD Candidate, School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability

Erin Alexiuk is a senior PhD candidate in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Since joining WISIR as a Research Associate in 2014, Erin has played an instrumental role supporting the incubation of several early-phase social innovations. Throughout her graduate career, Erin has worked with visionary leaders to help operationalize innovative ideas, catalyze change, and realize impact. While at WISIR, she has applied her academic background in complex systems thinking and social innovation to long-term projects with two ground-breaking Indigenous organizations: the Centre for First Nations Governance and Turtle Island Institute

Tara Campbell

Designer-in-residence

Tara is a designer specializing in change-enabling collaborative processes. As designer-in-residence at WISIR she prototypes, facilitates, and studies collaborations on a variety of projects.

Silvia Dorado

Visiting scholar

Silvia Dorado is an associate professor of Management at the University of Rhode Island and visiting professor at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation (WISIR) and the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED) at the University of Waterloo.

Katharine McGowan

Associate professor of social innovation, Mount Royal University

Katharine McGowan is an associate professor of social innovation at Mount Royal University‘s Bissett school of business in Calgary/Mohkinstis, Alberta.  Her research focuses on social innovation, resilience and complexity, connecting current questions such as just transitions, transformation and reconciliation to historical patterns, events and arrangements.

Michele-Lee Moore

Adjunct professor

Michele-Lee Moore is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria where she leads the Water, Innovation, and Global Governance lab based at the Centre for Global Studies. Michele-Lee is one of the faculty responsible delivering the Rockefeller Global Fellowship Program, and has previously helped deliver modules for the Graduate Diploma on Social Innovation.

She is a former McConnell Fellow in Social Innovation at Social Innovation Generation SiG@Waterloo, where she led a number of projects that examined the role of networks, social finance, and public policy in supporting social innovation.

Alexandra Post

Masters Candidate, Social and Ecological Sustainability

Alexandra Post is currently pursuing her Masters of Environmental Studies (MES) in Social and Ecological Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. Alexandra’s work is rooted in participatory action research, and she is passionate about  community-based projects.

Darcy Riddell

Director of strategic learning at the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation

Darcy Riddell has worked to change systems as an environmental activist, strategist, consultant, and educator for almost 20 years.

Ola Tjornbo

Archipelago consultants

Ola Tjornbo's research interests are primarily focused on social innovation, social-ecological transformation, governance and complexity, and social media and virtual social networks.