Advisory Council

GEOFF CAPE is a co-founder of Evergreen and has been its executive director since its inception in 1991. Evergreen is a registered not-for-profit organization that motivates people to create and sustain healthy, natural outdoor spaces. Recent initiatives include the Evergreen Brick Works, Canada’s first large-scale environmental discovery centre. Geoff is currently a board member of Parc Downsview Park, is on the Steering Committee of Lake Ontario Park, was founding Chair of the Sustainability Institute, and is a past member of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation Selection Committee. In 1999, Geoff was named one of Canada’s “Top 40 Under 40” by The Globe and Mail and in 2005, he was inducted into an International Fellowship by Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. In 2007, Geoff won the inaugural “Canadian Social Entrepreneur of the Year” Award from the Schwab Foundation. Through this award, he will join an esteemed network of social entrepreneurs from 26 countries who together will address some of the world’s most pressing social, environmental and economic problems.

ANNE COLLIER is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Net Family News, Inc., whose principal projects are ConnectSafely.org, a forum and resource for youth safety on the fixed and mobile social Web which she co-directs with Dr. Laurence Magid, and NetFamilyNews.org, an 11-year-old, free youth-tech news service with subscribers in some 50 countries. Her work has appeared in tech-parenting blogs and sites published by Children’s Technology Review, AOL, Microsoft, NCMEC, Yahoo, and other organizations. A frequent speaker on the subject of youth online safety, she has also been quoted, heard, and seen widely in print and broadcast media, including PBS Frontline, Parents magazine, Business Week, the BBC, Good Housekeeping, and Minnesota Public Radio. Before founding NetFamilyNews, she served as both a domestic and international news reporter and editor for print, radio, TV, and Web editions of the Christian Science Monitor. She is currently co-chair of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group—the first such task force formed under the Obama administration—which submits its report to the US Congress in June 2010, and in 2008 she served on the Internet Safety Technical Task Force at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She also serves on the advisory boards of the London- and Washington-based Family Online Safety Institute and the Washington-based Internet Education Foundation. She lives with her husband and two sons in Utah.

DAVID DEPPNER is the founder and director of Trees for the Future, Inc. a not-for-profit environmental organization based in Maryland that has planted over 50,000,000 trees around the world. Trees for the Future is a people-to-people action program that helps groups in developing communities initiate and run a wide range of local projects. Early in his career Dave was introduced to the concept of environmentally sustainable land management, and he worked with many of the pioneers who developed management systems using fast-growing, beneficial trees. Over the past 30 years, Dave has helped develop many international planting projects in areas devastated by deforestation. Since 1993, Dave and his organization have been active participants in the White House Panel concerning Global Climate Change. Dave has lived and served in 23 developing countries of Asia, East and West Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. He has been a Consultant to the US Peace Corps and USAID, and he currently volunteers for the US Department of Agriculture.

TIM FLANNERY is one of the world’s leading writer-scientists, explorers and conservationists. Tim’s books include the international bestseller The Weather Makers and the definitive ecological histories of Australia (The Future Eaters) and North America (The Eternal Frontier). He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement and has been a familiar voice on ABC Radio, NPR and the BBC for more than a decade. His pioneering work in New Guinea prompted Sir David Attenborough to put him in the league of the world’s great explorers and the writer Redmond O’Hanlon to remark: “He’s discovered more new species than Charles Darwin.” A former professor at Harvard, Tim is now a professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. He was named Australian of the Year in 2007. He is Chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a global collaboration between international business and science, which presents innovative and achievable solutions to climate change.

CHARLES HOPKINS holds the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability at York University, and he is a senior advisor to UNESCO’s Transdisciplinary Project, Educating for a Sustainable Future. He is also the executive director of the John Dearness Environmental Society and an advisor to Environment Canada’s Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network. Previously, he was Superintendent of Curriculum with the Toronto Board of Education. Charles was also the founder and Principal of the Toronto Urban Studies Center, North America’s only school-board-owned urban study center. A long-time leader in the field of environmental education, he has lectured and presented papers in over 60 countries, is the author of a textbook on ecology, and has been featured in nine major television documentaries. His many awards include an Honorary PhD from Uppsala University in Sweden, The Silver Jubilee Medal from Queen Elizabeth II, an award from the Prime Minister of Canada for his contribution to the UN-sponsored Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from North American Association for Environmental Education.

KEN HUDSON (avatar: Kenny Hubble) is the Managing Director, Virtual World Design Centre, Loyalist College, where he established the first Canadian Second Life educational program. Ken’s work has garnered international recognition and won Loyalist the Colleges Ontario Award for Innovation and the ORION Award of Merit for education in 2008. He has collaborated with organizations worldwide using virtual worlds, including Harvard University, Brown University, the U.S. Department of State and the Canadian Border Services Agency. Ken is a regular speaker at conferences on the opportunities of virtual worlds and web 2.0 and he publishes widely on the use of virtual environments for education. He recently consulted on the California earthquake drill alternative reality game After Shock, which was featured in Time and WIRED magazines. He is a member of the Strategic Innovation Lab, Ontario College of Art and Design, a think tank developing foresight models for integrated design. Ken was educated at the University of Toronto and at the Institute for the Psychological Study of the Arts, University of Florida.

DAVID LANK is the Director Emeritus of the Dobson Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management. He teaches MBA-level courses in entrepreneurial start-ups, early-phase management and entrepreneurial leadership. As founder in 1968 and now Chair of Helix Investments – Canada’s oldest investment management firm – David has been personally involved in the venture capital funding of 150 companies, as well as numerous other entrepreneurial initiatives. He has served on the Boards of many international corporate and not-for-profit enterprises, including numerous organizations dedicated to the protection of the environment. He has been a visiting lecturer at more than 20 universities on a variety of subjects. David is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (London), a Fellow of the Explorers’ Club (New York), and a Member of the Order of Canada (1996). He is one of the world’s authorities on John James Audubon and has published numerous articles and more than 40 books on various topics.

INGRID LEMAN STEFANOVIC is the Director, University of Toronto Centre for Environment and is the Chair of the Steering Committee of the United Nations University Toronto Regional Centre of Expertise on “Education for Sustainable Development.” Ingrid is a current or past member of various professional associations, including Chair of the Board and Executive Co-Director of the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, and member of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. She has published widely on environmental ethics, particularly in the area of how values affect environmental decision making. She is the author of Safeguarding Our Common Future: Rethinking Sustainable Development and co-editor of the forthcoming The Natural City: Re-Envisioning the Built Environment. She has lectured and given presentations through Canada and the United States, as well as in Greece, India, Japan and The Netherlands, and she appears regularly in the media. Ingrid’s current research includes “Evaluative Images of the Lake Ontario Waterfront Trail,” which tracks perceptions and values revealed through children’s narratives, drawings and photos.

JOSEPHINE OKOT is the Founder and Managing Director of Victoria Seeds Ltd., which delivers quality seed to smallhold farmers producing over 90% of the agricultural output in Uganda and other countries of the region. Josephine has overcome extraordinary challenges. Despite a civil war that lasted 20 years in her home region, she established her business in the post-conflict area of Northern Uganda in order to generate employment and to empower rural women. Josephine received an MSc in International Business Administration from Washington International University in 2005. She was cited as the leading Ugandan woman entrepreneur in 2006 by Business in Africa Magazine, and in 2007 she was the co-Laureate of the prestigious YARA Prize for a Green Revolution in Africa. In 2009 she was the only woman nominated for the inaugural Oslo Business for Peace Award for her promotion of socially responsible and ethical business practices. She recently supported the formation of Seeds for Development, a charity which offers micro-credit to the internally displaced communities of Northern Uganda. She lives in Gulu.

JEFFREY ROSENTHAL is a Managing Partner of Imperial Capital Group, which he co-founded in 1989. Jeff co-led the formation of three acquisition funds, and the resulting acquisition of a number of successful platform companies, including Stantec Engineering, E.D. Smith & Sons, Associated Freezers, Procaps Encapsulation and Kenra Ltd. He has been integrally involved in the growth of these businesses, leading or co-leading follow-on acquisitions and arranging both private and public debt and equity financings. Earlier, Jeff was Vice-President of Startups Inc., where he was responsible for raising financing and assisting with strategic planning, setting of management goals and establishing systems for various entrepreneurial and start-up businesses. Jeff is Chairman of the Canadian Shaare Zedek Hospital Foundation and a member of the Board of the Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation. He is a past co-chair of the Finance and Major Gifts divisions of the Toronto United Jewish Appeal campaign. He is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and he holds a third degree black belt in Shotokan Karate.

DAVID SUZUKI, Co-Founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, is a scientist, environmentalist and broadcaster renowned for his radio and television programs that explain the complexities of the natural sciences in a compelling, easily understood way. He received an Honours BA in Biology from Amherst College (Massachusetts) and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago. He is a Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia, Sustainable Development Research Institute. In 1972, he was awarded the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship as the outstanding research scientist in Canada under the age of 35. He holds 24 international honourary degrees and is recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology. He is the recipient of UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for Science, the United Nations Environment Program Medal, and the Global 500. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, is a Companion to the Order of Canada, and is a fellow of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. Dr. Suzuki has written 47 books, including 17 for children.