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.
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.
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.
Aneel Chima
Aneel Chima, PhD, is director of the Division of Health and Human Performance at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Flourishing Project. Aneel co-founded and co-chairs the Wellbeing, Innovation, and Social Change in Education (WISE) Network, a global movement of higher education social innovation programs at 100 universities, and co-convenes the Flourishing Academic Network (FAN), a consortium of centers and research institutes at top universities across the North America focused on reinventing higher education as a force for global thriving. His work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and other journals.
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.
Melanie Goodchild
Melanie Goodchild is an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) complexity and systems thinking scholar. She is moose clan from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Ketegaunseebee First Nations. Melanie is currently a PHD candidate in Social & Ecological Sustainability at the University of Waterloo and is a Research Fellow with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience. Melanie is a faculty member with the Academy for Systems Change, the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning, the Presencing Institute and she is a Scholar Practitioner Faculty member at the University of Vermont's MS and PhD in Leadership for Sustainability. Melanie is an alumna of the IWF Leadership Foundation's Fellows Program (2015-16 class) sponsored by Harvard Business School and INSEAD.
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.
Zhiish McKenzie
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.
Zhiish has worked to improve health outcomes for Indigenous people her entire career and brings a whole person, whole systems perspective. In addition to her work as a medical practitioner, Zhiish brings 25 years experience as a culturally-centered wilderness guide in programs like Rediscovery and Outward Bound and has a deep commitment to the power of land-based traditions. A musician, reality TV show winner, backcountry devotee, a lifelong learner and the mother to two beautiful daughters, Zhiish is well known for being good company to those on deep journeys of healing, learning and transformation.
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.
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.
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.
Morẹ́nikẹ́ Ẹniọlá Ọláòṣebìkan
Morẹ́nikẹ́ Ẹniọlá Ọláòṣebìkan is an award winning entrepreneur, innovator, social activist and clinical pharmacist. Driven to make a difference since she was 7, when she first learned about entire villages of children losing their parents to HIV as they consumed counterfeit drugs, her most recent start-up is developing modular medication manufacturing to address critical drug shortages and was just shortlisted as a finalist for the 2021 MIT Solve Global Challenges Award. She is also the founder of the Ribbon Rouge Foundation - a million dollar social enterprise addressing health disparities for marginalized Black people.
Morẹ́nikẹ́ is deeply committed to practices that cultivate radical self-honesty and accountability, to learning from every experience and to aligning with her evolving understanding of her life’s purpose. She is passionate about systems change work. Morẹ́nikẹ́ has served in leadership roles for the Alberta College of Pharmacy, Engineers Without Borders, and CapitalCare Foundation.
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.
Our partners at the Suncor Energy Foundation whose financial and moral support has been the bedrock of this 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.
