Our Team
Julian Norris
Julian Norris, PhD, is a scholar-practitioner and wilderness guide, and founding director of the Wolf Willow Institute who has spent his life exploring the crossroads where human development and systems transformation meet. Originally trained as an anthropologist, he is a faculty member at the Haskayne School of Business where he teaches courses in leadership and complexity. Julian’s work is seasoned by a love for the bardic traditions, a lifetime spent in wild landscapes and a long-standing practice of contemplative and somatic disciplines. His past roles include Director of Systems Leadership at Banff Centre and Associate Director for Outward Bound Canada and he is a coach-advisor for senior leaders and organizations in the government, corporate and social sectors grappling with complex challenges and opportunities.
Laura Blakeman
Laura Blakeman, PhD is a highly creative and strategic thinker known for her capacity to build beautiful and engaging transformative experiences. She draws from her trans-disciplinary experience in the performing arts, depth and developmental psychology, spiritual practice, wilderness guiding, and land-based living to better equip practitioners with the capabilities required to meet complex challenges. Her colleagues particularly appreciate her ability to take a systems-approach, centering learning as the core driver of change in all domains and at every scale. Laura has researched and written extensively on the state-shifting power of beauty. She is a founding director at Wolf Willow and calls the southwest U.S. canyon country home.
Cheryl Rose
Cheryl Rose is an educator, a systems coach and organizational magician. She was the founding Executive Director for the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning and one of the principal directors for the national Social Innovation Generation (SiG) partnership. She was the Associate Director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience (WISIR), a McConnell Foundation Senior Fellow and a core member of the design and delivery team for the Getting To Maybe Social Innovation Residency program. Cheryl mentors systems leaders and social innovators across the country and is revered for her kindness, her practical wisdom and her capacity to connect and uplift those at the frontlines of change.
Dila Houle (Yellow Horn)
Born and raised on the Piikani Nation in Southern Alberta, Dila is a widely respected Elder, ceremonialist and storyteller who has dedicated her life to following a spiritual path. She is a living link to the original teachings of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot). The mother of six boys, and grandmother to numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren, Dila has worked as a social services director, an addictions counsellor, an Elder facilitator for Corrections Canada and as an Elder advisor to Indigenous organizations across Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1989 she climbed the Pyramid of the Sun. She has guided and inspired many different leaders and changemakers and offers a rare blend of wisdom, humour, insight, compassion and fierce honesty to all who seek her counsel.
David Stevenson
David is a skilled facilitator of both inner work and group process and has extensive experience supporting community-led and culturally based innovations addressing complex social challenges. He was the CEO for the Moose Hide campaign, worked with street-entrenched Indigenous youth in Vancouver, served as CEO of an Indigenous Provincial Crown Corporation, and played a senior leadership role in the BC Government’s implementation of the Tsilqhot’in Decision. David has held several executive positions in government leading reconciliation initiatives and is Chair of the Royal Roads University School of Leadership Studies Advisory Committee. He is of Irish, French and Haudenosaunee ancestry and lives on the side of Pkols Mountain in the Lekwungen-speaking People’s territory.
Syrus Marcus Ware
Syrus Marcus Ware is an artist, activist, scholar and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize co-nominee. He is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Canada and Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism and his life and work are dedicated to the unfinished work of dismantling slavery and systems of oppression. He is a deeply committed advocate for racial justice, for transgender parents, and for people with disabilities. He has worked for decades to transform systems and cycles of incarceration. Syrus is a widely exhibited visual artist, a member of the Performance Disability Art Collective and the author of multiple books and articles. He is a Vanier Scholar and is a recently appointed faculty member at McMaster University.
Gibrán Rivera
Gibrán Rivera is an internationally renowned Master Facilitator. He is a teacher, guide and coach who works to develop self-sovereignty within individuals so that they can activate powerful leadership networks. Gibrán helps us build the skills we need in these times defined by VUCA. Volatility. Uncertainty. Complexity. Ambiguity. He is the originator of the Evolutionary Leadership Workshop. Host of the Better Men Project, and other programs that support our growth, transformation and collaborative alignment. His work brings close attention to dynamics of power, equity, and inclusion. He has designed and facilitated some of the most prestigious fellowships in the country. And he specializes in the transformational offsite retreat.
Melanie Goodchild
Dr. Melanie Goodchild, Anishinaabe (Ojibway), moose clan, is a systems thinking and complexity scholar who offers a uniquely Anishinaabe approach to making sense of society's most entrenched problems. She is from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Ketegaunseebee First Nations and is currently the Vice President Indigenous Knowledge, Scholarship and Research at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, an Indigenous post-secondary institute located in Baawaating within the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy. Dr. Goodchild collaborates with community-based and systems practice initiatives around the world and is passionate about utilizing complexity-aware tools together with Anishinaabe gikendaasowin (our original ways of knowing) to support deep systems awareness and transformative systems change.
Aneel Chima
Aneel Chima, PhD, currently leads a start-up dedicated to the development of ethical AI systems. He was previously the Associate Executive Director of the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. Before UVA, he spent twelve years at Stanford University where he was Director of the Division of Health and Human Performance and Founding Director of the Stanford Flourishing Project. He is the past Chair of the Board of Trustees at the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Veterans, Immigrants, and Refugees Trauma Institute of Sacramento. His work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and other journals.
Vanessa Reid
Vanessa Reid is an architect of cultural evolution who works at the intersection between systems and soul. She has worked around the world to co-create cultures and communities of practice dedicated to systems transformation amidst complexity, collapse and chaos. She holds Masters degrees in both architecture and process-oriented psychology. Vanessa is the former executive director of Santropol Roulant and publisher of ascent magazine. A translocal practice leader, she co-founded the Living Wholeness Institute and The Art of Hosting -Athens and works with Trailblazery’s Hedge School that has been lauded for its ‘exploration of the possible.’ Vanessa has a particular call to work with transitions, transformation and the natural cycles of life - from the mess and excitement of creating new systems and initiatives to Conscious Closure and the Wild life of Dying.
Tuesday Rivera
Tuesday is a coach, guide, and facilitator who left the fields of traditional social service provision and academics to become a new kind of change-maker partnering with clients around the world. Tuesday’s work is featured in the book Walk, Out, Walk On by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, and she is known internationally for her strategic work with organizations and communities engaged in systemic change.
Trained as a psychotherapist, with a BA in Individual/Family Studies and a Master's in Social Work, Tuesday is an expert in supporting transformational work at every level.
Zhiish McKenzie, M.D.
Dr. Zhiish McKenzie is Aniishnaabe from the Temagami First Nation on Bear Island in northern Ontario where she belongs to the Turtle Clan. She serves as a bridge across healing traditions, and her path integrates clinical medicine with Indigenous ways of health and wellness. She is a family physician, a psychedelic therapist and serves as a Clinical Instructor & Indigenous Portfolio Co-Director at the Faculty of Medicine at UBC and as an MD in the Roots To Thrive ketamine-assisted therapy program. She is especially connected to the spiritual healing inherent in psychedelic medicine.
Daryl Kootenay
A Traditional singer, dancer, artist, father and youth leader from the Stoney Nakoda Nation of Treaty 7 in southern Alberta. After graduating high school Daryl has travelled globally to volunteer his time in countries such as Peru, Nicaragua and Africa working with Canada World Youth first as a participant, then an intern and employee. Daryl has also became apart of Canada Worlds Youths Aboriginal youth committee and was a delegate at the World Conference of Indigenous Peoples in 2014. Daryl now dedicates his time locally working with the Stoney Nakoda youth and youth throughout the Bow Valley performing and teaching traditional art and dance. Daryl recently had coordinated a youth delegation of 6 from his home community to attend the Permanent Forum on indigenous peoples at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City April - May 2017.
Our Board
Laurie Edward
Laurie is a social innovator, entrepreneur and community catalyst. Her work is dedicated to resourcing, amplifying and scaling solutions that have the power to transform society. She has led award-winning system-level change campaigns and initiatives across a wide range of issues and sectors, including public land use, national retail, financial services, and post-secondary education. She is a founding director of Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Banff Canmore Community Foundation.
Upkar Arora
Bio Coming Soon…
Erin Woods
Bio Coming Soon…
Our Partners
The Wolf Willow Institute is a small node in a growing web of inspiring and supportive relationships.
We particularly recognize:
Colleagues and thought partners from multiple initiatives including the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resiliency, the Getting To Maybe residencies, the Stanford Flourishing Project, and the Living Wholeness Institute.
Our colleagues at Banff Centre who incubated and continue to support the Systems Leadership Initiative.
The hand and voice of the Muse who has long provoked, inspired and pressed our strange proclivities and soul’s passions into something of a gift for our people and planet.