People

 John Abraham

Nino is a post-doctoral fellow with the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED).  Read about her current work on “Cross-sector alliances to solve complex environmental issues.” 

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.

Melanie Chaplier is a cultural anthropologist from Belgium who just joined WISIR as a postdoctoral Research Fellow. She previously earned her PhD at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve and was a Fulbright Fellow at Dartmouth College in 2015-2016.

Kira Cooper is a postdoctoral fellow exploring the nexus of inner and outer sustainability. 

Senior Scientist, Geography Institute and Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland 

Natalie Ceperley is an interdisciplinary ecohydrologist at the Geography Institute of the University of Bern whose work sits at the intersection of hydrology, community knowledge, and environmental resilience of, most often alpine environments or semi-arid agrosavannas. She leads projects that co-create water knowledge with local communities, from meltwater management in the Karakoram to an urban watershed cooperation around Bern, bridging cutting-edge tracers (stable isotopes, environmental DNA) with transdisciplinary and participatory approaches. She co-leads the HELPING Working Group on Co-Creating Water Knowledge within the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) and is co-initiating an eDNA for Hydrology network. Her teaching empowers students  to take ownership of environmental monitoring and management, via courses such as self-made geosensing and an emerging forest hydrology teaching lab.

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.

Dr. Melisa Diaz is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth Sciences and Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. Her research examines how icy landscapes in the Arctic and Antarctic change over time and how they interact with the atmosphere, ocean, and ecosystems. By analyzing the geochemical composition of ice, water, and soil, her team investigates how nutrients and salts cycle through polar environments. Additionally, she studies how climate change impacts polar systems, including how warming temperatures and shifting ice dynamics affect nutrient delivery and bioavailability. By focusing on these remote areas, she aims to uncover crucial insights into the functioning of Earth’s polar regions, providing valuable information on the role of the cryosphere in understanding habitability on Earth and elsewhere in the Solar System.

Sean Geobey is an Associate Professor in the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo.

His research focuses on the governance and design for collective action for social innovation, including the use of evidence in interdisciplinary decision-making, design for participatory decsion-making, and social finance.

Dr. Faisal Khan is a distinguished biologist, technology innovator and policy entrepreneur who leads the federally-funded Precision Medicine Lab in Peshawar — an interdisciplinary and translational biology research Lab - that started in 2013. His Lab develops and uses tools in systems and synthetic biology for various applications in medicine, environment and the industry. Dr Khan graduated with a Masters and Doctorate from the University of Oxford (UK). More recently, he completed a one-year training in Cancer Biology and Therapeutics at Harvard Medical School and is also an alumnus of the NASA’s STAR-2 program. In 2019, he was nominated as a Young Global Leader from Pakistan by the World Economic Forum. In 2021, he was appointed as Advisor to the Minister for Science and Technology and IT, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where he designed and developed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Science Agenda launched in 2021. 

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 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.

Sergio Nava-Lara is a Postdoctoral Researcher at WISIR, supporting peer-learning for capacity building in the Investment Readiness Program. He holds a Master's degree in Social Sciences Applied to Regional Studies from the University of Quintana Roo and a PhD in Educational Innovation from Tecnologico de Monterrey.

Katey Park is a postdoctoral researcher leading a Principles-Focused Evaluation of the Investment-Readiness Program. Throughout this project, she is working collaboratively to develop meaningful principles for the Canadian social finance ecosystem and assess the extent to which social innovators align with these principles.

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.

Stephen Quilley is the Associate director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience as well as an associate professor of the School of Environment, Resource and Sustainability in the Department of Environment at the University of Waterloo. 

Dilek Sayedahmed is a Postdoctoral Reseacher at Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), leading the systems mapping components of the Investment Readiness Program Evaluation, Mapping and Peer Learning project in partnership with the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet).

Gryphon Theriault-Loubier is a doctoral candidate at the University of Waterloo School of Environment, Enterprise and Development (SEED). As the program manager for Strategic Design at WISIR, Gryph works with our staff and postdoctoral researchers to find strategic alignment and opportunity within the Investment Readiness Program (IRP). Within the IRP partnership team, Gryph works in collaboration with the data and digital products teams to create a knowledge base and meaningful platforms for connection across the ecosystem. Gryph’s research focuses on the development of approaches that improve the ability of organisations to manage in complex environments.  Gryph is interested in strategy, systems, design, complexity, and related fields of research.  

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

Cassie Robinson is a Senior Practice Fellow at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience and one of the initiators of the Wealth Design Studio, alongside a wider founding team to be announced shortly.

Having spent seven years working inside philanthropic institutions — including playing a pivotal role in designing and establishing the Emerging Futures programme at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, co-founding the Wealth Hackers Initiative, co-creating a field-building practice at Partners for a New Economy, and heading up Innovation, Policy and Practice at The National Lottery Community Fund — she now focuses on the deeper codes of the Great Wealth Transfer. Drawing on her background in psychology and her practices in systems innovation, futures and foresight, and transition design, she works with individual wealth holders, family offices, and those inside the wealth management world. Her most recent certifications relevant to this work include a Responsible Investment Association (RIA) certification in Regenerative Investing and a Trauma of Money™ (TOM) Professional Certification.

When she is not working around the flows of financial wealth, Cassie is building social and ecological wealth. She is developing The Steadying — an earthwise response network for the metacrisis, weaving systemic risk awareness together with practical and relational preparedness — rooted in an understanding of the world as alive and ensouled. Among the capacities she brings to this work are her certification in Embodied Ecology and her qualifications as a Fire Fighter Type II and Wilderness First Responder. Alongside this, she holds a strategy role for biocultural work in Wales with the Roddick Foundation. Further information about her practice is available at https://www.cassierobinson.work/. She divides her time between Canada, the UK, and Europe.

Kaitlyn Rathwell is an environmental change scholar and practicing performance artist.

Zahra Valika, Junior Fellow

WISIR

Frances Westley joined the University of Waterloo as the J.W. McConnell Chair in social innovation in July 2007. In this capacity she is one of the principle leads in a Canada wide initiative in social innovation, Social Innovation Generation (SiG) a cross sectoral partnership to build capacity for social innovation in Canada funded by the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, University of Waterloo and the Ontario government. 

Lead researcher on the Social Innovation Simulation project at Social Innovation Generation (SiG) / Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), Kirsten is doing a PhD in systems design engineering.