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