The purpose for our organization is to provide stable and meaningful work for our members.
Yuill Herbert
Principal
MA
Yuill has been an SSG Principal for over 15 years. He pioneered land-use and GHG emission planning in Canada, helped introduce the LEED for Homes rating system in Canada and co-developed the Integrated Design Process course used throughout Canada and the US. Yuill has worked on and led more than forty community energy and GHG plans and models across Canada. He has leading expertise on climate change mitigation and adaptation systems modelling that incorporates energy, GHG emissions and co-benefits. Yuill serves as a director on the boards of the Canada Research Chair on Sustainable Community Development, the Canadian Worker Cooperative Federation and Tatamagouche Community Land Trust.
Contact Yuill:
Jeremy Murphy
Principal
MPlan | MSc | NCI certificate
Jeremy is an urban planner, project manager and sustainability specialist who continues to generate cutting-edge community solutions. He is an ambitious community leader and communicator. Creative public engagement and facilitation, urban growth planning, community energy and emissions planning, sustainable community design and innovative policy creation are among Jeremy’s greatest skills. His experience with community planning, sustainability expertise, facilitation and sustainable building design allow Jeremy to make useful contributions to any project. Jeremy combines big idea sustainability thinking with on the ground application, ensuring his projects are on target, enjoyable and effective. Jeremy is an instructor in the Simon Fraser University Community Economic Development program. He is also one of the two Co-founders of The HiVE - Vancouver’s social impact co-working space.
Contact Jeremy:
Mel de Jager
Principal
P.Eng | MPlan | PMP | LEED AP BD+C
Mel is a planner, urban designer, engineer and project manager. She focuses on the planning, design and implementation of sustainable urban infrastructure and complete communities. Mel’s background includes a unique combination of experience in community planning, land development, urban design, civil engineering, research, modelling and analysis. She has provided support and expertise to clients in both the public (municipal/provincial) and private sectors. Her projects have been diverse, ranging from watershed management plans and municipal infrastructure design, to urban growth strategies and GHG modelling. Mel has extensive experience in project management and project delivery, with strong communication skills and integrated team facilitation.
Contact Mel:
Julia Meyer-MacLeod
Principal
BSc | BEnvD | LEED AP BD+C
Julia brings a breadth of experience to sustainability initiatives, having worked with commercial consultancies, research firms, government, universities, and non-profit organizations. With degrees in environmental science and design, she switches comfortably between methodological and creative problem solving approaches, offering insights that are not often otherwise considered. Julia has technical modelling, GIS and visualization skills, bringing rigour and dynamism to SSG’s outputs. Grateful for an upbringing in Canada’s outdoors, she also has a professional background and personal interest in wilderness leadership and outdoor education, which gave her an aptitude for program management, public speaking, communications, as well as an overall enthusiasm to the work that she does.
Contact Julia:
Rebecca Foon
Principal
MUP | LEED AP
Rebecca is a versatile urban planner who is dedicated to integrating a holistic understanding of sustainability in growing healthy communities. She has worked closely with municipalities, higher education institutions and school boards across the country on leading sustainability plans and strategies including Western, McGill, Algonquin College, Vancouver School Board, Oxford County, Halton Hills and the City of Kingston. Working closely with our academic partners, she has organized numerous e-Dialogues with Dr. Ann Dale involving thinkers, mayors, planners, academics and activists. Foon is also an internationally acclaimed (and Juno award-winning) cellist and composer.
Contact Rebecca:
Colin MacDougall
Director of Finance
BIB (Bachelor of International Business) | MBA
Colin has spent most of his career in and dedicated most of his passion to the co-operative sector. He was one of the first members of La Siembra Co-operative, creators of Camino fair trade and organic products. From sales to logistics to board President, Colin played a number of roles at La Siembra; however, he ultimately found his calling in the back-office functions of finance and administration. From La Siembra, Colin moved to the Agency for Co-operative Housing to serve as Director, Corporate Services.
Colin currently shares his time between SSG and the Agency.
Contact Colin:
Emily McQuarrie
Coordinator, Finance & Administration
HBA
Emily is an experienced administrator with a passion for innovative data management solutions using open source tools. She has spent much of her career dedicated to organizing the disorganized world of the arts, and has worked closely with many community-run nonprofits. Emily has a strong background in gender studies, and integrates equity-based ethics and methodology into her work everyday.
Contact Emily:
Naomi Devine
Communications Director + Senior Consultant
BA | Post-Grad Cert. Environmental Visual Communications
Naomi is a sustainability policy and communications expert. She has built a career at the leading edge of sustainability and climate policy advising governments and working with universities, local governments, and civil society organizations. Naomi has created groundbreaking sustainability policy at the University of Victoria and served on BC’s pioneering Premier’s Climate Action Team. She stewarded the award-winning community sustainability plan, Whistler2020, through the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and facilitated the action planning work of 17 task forces focused on creating the town’s sustainable future. Afterward, she turned to strategic communications and led the creation of the strategy used to elect Dr. Andrew Weaver as the first Green Party Member of the Legislative Assembly in the province’s history. Visual communications and storytelling are what she now employs to assist communities and organizations in crafting effective and long-lasting moves toward a sustainable future.
Contact Naomi:
Chris Strashok
Senior Consultant
MA | BSc
Chris is a systems modeller, engineer, facilitator and project manager. He develops creative and interactive ways of modelling system dynamics to understand the network of influences contributing to any situation. Chris’ background includes a unique combination of analyzing problems within the energy industry as well as for municipal, provincial and federal levels of government. He has developed and worked with many systems models to gain deeper understanding of the production and use of energy and resources. Chris has expertise in many systems analysis tools including simulation models, data visualization, viable system models and soft systems modelling. Chris’s programming, modelling and coding abilities allow him to bring rigour and innovation to a variety of municipal and institutional planning and assessment projects. His extensive experience in systems theory, systems analysis, data visualization, customer relations and knowledge communication brings focus, clarity and insight to projects.
Contact Chris:
Ann Dale
Senior Advisor
PHD | Canada Research Chair
Ann Dale is a professor with the School of Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Social and Applied Sciences at Royal Roads University. She held her university’s first Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Community Development (2004-2014), is a Trudeau Fellow Alumna (2004) and a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her award-winning research focuses on sustainable community development, social capital and agency, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and governance. She is deeply committed to building novel research dissemination and on-line media tools, and leads one of the most current content research websites in the country. Professor Dale chairs the Canadian Consortium for Sustainable Development Research (CCSDR), a consortium of all the heads of research across the Canada. In collaboration with SSG, she has recently published Community Vitality: From Adaptation to Transformation.
Contact Ann:
Peter Hough
Board Member
MBA
Peter is the principal of Affinity Consulting, a practice engaged in co-operative development, research, training, and management. Peter recently retired from his long-term position of Financial Officer of the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation. He is also the Fund Manager of “Tenacity Works”, the CWCF’s revolving loan fund. Peter has 25 years of experience as a member, manager and director of worker and consumer co-operatives. In addition, he has assisted with many co-operative start-ups, developing bylaws, conducting training programs, completing feasibility studies and business plans, and providing post start-up mentoring.
Contact Peter:
Ralph Torrie
Senior Associate
Ralph is an internationally recognized expert in the field of sustainable energy and climate change response strategies, for governments and business.
He pioneered many of the conventions now used throughout the world for local government GHG emissions planning, and he was the principal author of Canada’s first low carbon scenario analysis - the first such analysis done anywhere. He served as the Assistant Coordinator of the Energy Research
Group of the United Nations University and the International Development Research Centre, Vice President of ICF International, Managing Director of Navigant Consulting and Managing Director of the Trottier Energy Futures Project.
He is a senior associate of the University of Calgary’s Canadian Energy Systems Analysis Research (CESAR) initiative. Ralph works with SSG on numerous projects related to energy and climate change response planning.
Contact Ralph:
Brennan Vogel
Climate change adaptation
Brett Korterling
Resources Planner
Gabor Sass
Ecosystem science; remote sensing
Contact via LinkedIn
Ian Picketts
Climate Change Adaptation Researcher
Kate Kennedy
Editor and copywriter
Melanie Jellett
Climate change adaptation; risk assessment
Melissa Garcia Lamarca
Ecological economics; sustainability researcher
Raphael Shay
Energy Management Systems and Community Planning
Tim Taylor
Project Development and Planning, Sustainable Energy Systems, Business Case Preparation
Virgil Martin
Population, Employment and Land Needs Modelling, and Forecasting.
Will McDowall
Policy, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Interested in becoming an Associate Member?
AMs and prospective AMs approach SSG from time to time with projects that require additional support or capacity.
Contact us for application instructions. Applying to be an Associate Member and applying for a job with SSG are very different things. Please bear this in mind when expressing your interest in working with us.
We fundamentally differ from other types of businesses in three key ways:
Advocacy and representation
We are actively engaged in Coops and Mutuals Canada, Canadian Worker Co-op Federation (CWCF), Cooperatives UK, and participate in UN negotiations and engagement.
