Kirsty is an award-winning senior engagement strategist with a deep understanding of municipal public engagement across a wide-variety of service areas including: transportation, open-space and community planning, as well as municipal policy and financing. She has more than 15 years of experience in strategic communications, stakeholder relations, issues management, and project management. Kirsty is passionate about including community voices in public decisions and initiatives.

Lara has been involved in the field of public participation (p2) since 2005.  She is passionate about creating productive conversations that allow for a positive process and usable feedback.  Her experience includes developing p2 strategies for complex and controversial multi-stakeholder projects. She is also well versed in implementing a large variety of digital and in-person public participation tactics. Her facilitation experience includes everything from small stakeholder meetings to large public events

She spent 11 years working at The City of Calgary in the Engage Resource Unit where she collaborated on an amended engage policy and the development of an engage framework.  Lara led a team of p2 professionals working on diverse projects from many lines of service including parks, transportation, police, finance, community development, recreation, and planning. She then became a p2 consultant working with municipal governments, non-profit organizations and energy companies.

Lara is a licensed IAP2 Foundations trainer and is on the board of the Wild Rose Chapter.  She has a degree in Psychology and a certificate in positive psychology. She volunteers at the Calgary Women’s Centre teaching yoga a couple of times a month.

Through engagement, communication, and facilitation, Gay Robinson, helps organizations include the voices of stakeholders in decisions that impact their lives. Her passion lies in working collaboratively with communities and organizations at the grassroots level; preferring to keep discussions at the kitchen table rather than the boardroom table. 

Based in Alberta, Gay’s boutique consulting firm, Gay Robinson Consulting, serves clients ranging from energy companies, utilities and regulators to community groups, school boards and local governments. She encourages her clients to raise the bar and establish best practices for stakeholder engagement. 

Gay is an active member of IAP2 – as a licensed trainer for the IAP2 Program since 2005 and in various leadership roles. She is an IAP2 Canada Certified Public Participation Professional (CP3) and serves as an assessor for this professional certification program. She currently serves on the Board for IAP2 Wild Rose Chapter as Treasurer and is co-chair for the IAP2 2020 North American conference. Gay is also an accredited and life-time member of the Canadian Public Relations Society.

Megan Fitzgerald is an engagement manager at the City of Vancouver, with a passion for dialogue in the context of citybuilding and major infrastructure. She holds a Masters in Community and Regional Planning and is an alumnus of the SFU Centre for Dialogue and Civic Engagement.

Contact Megan at megan.fitzgerald@vancouver.ca.

Trevor has over ten years of public engagement experience and works as Public Engagement Lead with Maskwa Environmental Consulting Ltd. in Calgary. He has led numerous large-scale engagement processes across Alberta and Manitoba where he has focused on developing processes that integrate feedback from thousands of landowners for major electrical transmission developments. Trevor’s processes aim to reflect community values, build and strengthen relationships and strive for transparent and respective dialogue. Trevor sat as President of IAP2 Canada’s Prairies Chapter where he had been an executive member for five years and now sits as a Director at large on the Wild Rose Chapter.

Yvonne Morrison

Based in Winnipeg, Yvonne is a Manager with MNP LLP’s Management Consulting practice. She has over ten years' experience designing, supporting and leading stakeholder and public participation processes to support clients’ policy and planning, governance, organizational effectiveness and evaluation projects.  She has worked with health and social services organizations, industry associations, provincial and municipal governments, and First Nations and Indigenous organizations in Manitoba, Ontario and the Northwest Territories to encourage and enable meaningful stakeholder participation in key decisions.

Yvonne achieved her CP3 designation in December 2017. She is also a Certified Associate in Project Management and volunteers as an Agency Liaison with the United Way.  In her leisure time, she enjoys travelling, playing volleyball and being bossed around by her mini-dachshund.

Contact Yvonne at yvonne.morrison@mnp.ca

Based on Edmonton AB, Kim is a Principal with Dialogue Partners Inc. With over 10 years working in the field of engagement, she has developed a passion for designing and facilitating conversations that matter and creating engagement experiences where participants feel valued, relationships are built and initiatives and projects move forward.  Experienced in both large and small-scale projects, she has facilitated community forums in large urban centers as well as walked pipelines with Elders in the remote wilderness.

Kim sees each engagement project as a new opportunity to create, design and implement unique processes and programs that allow stakeholders to actively engage in dialogue where they build new connections and relationships. These relationships are the foundation on which new ideas, joint efforts, and collaboratives are built upon and succeed in implementation. She has worked with a wide variety of stakeholders, participants and many indigenous communities across Canada.

You can reach Kim at kim@dialoguepartners.ca

Tannis Topolnisky is a licensed trainer of IAP2’s Foundations in Public Participation and IAP2’s Public Participation for Decision Makers training programs, an assessor of new IAP2 licensed trainers, an IAP2 mentor and a Certified Public Participation Professional.  

As owner of Topent, she combines her passions of public participation, facilitation and capacity building.  Bringing people together to make a difference both in the individual, the organization, their relationships and beyond into programs, policies and decision making is what she has dedicated her career to.

Through her 19 years in the profession she has worked within municipal and federal governments and in consulting, touching a diversity of areas such as heritage conservation, policy and legislation development, health, contaminated sites management, affordable housing, surplus school sites, environmental justice, transit, woman’s abuse, community and recreation facilities, municipal budgeting and public education. She has worked on projects and for organizations that have won both IAP2 Canada and IAP2 International’s Core Values Awards for Project of the Year and Organization of the Year.

When not doing this work she can be found at the hockey rink and soccer pitches cheering on her two kids, spending time outdoors, running, reading and learning.

You can reach Tannis at tannistopolnisky@gmail.com

The City of Edmonton's Director of Public Engagement, Shawn loves to help the public, Indigenous communities and stakeholder groups face and overcome challenges and ultimately grow. With over 15 years of experience, Shawn's approach is through meaningful engagement design and implementation, strategic communication, expert facilitation and sound advice.

Shawn is trained as a Certified Engineering Technologist (CET), a Registered Professional Planner (RPP, MCIP) and is proud to hold the Certified Public Participation Professional designation (CP3).

Shawn is the current vice-president of the IAP2 Wild Rose Chapter. He also contributes to the Edmonton Professional Development Committee and is a member of the Conference Planning Team for the 2020 IAP2 North American Conference.

Contact Shawn at shawn.bravender@edmonton.ca.

Natalie joined MNP’s Winnipeg office as a Senior Consultant in 2016, with over seven years of experience in the fields of community engagement and environmental assessment. In her current role, Natalie provides consulting support and works closely with stakeholders to complete feasibility studies, policy reviews, economic development strategies and strategic plans that clearly and effectively reflect stakeholder’s feedback.

Contact Natalie at natalie.henault@mnp.ca