A New Era
For over twelve years ACAP Saint John has been a second home, the people working and volunteering around me have been a second family, and the experiences the organization has brought my way will undoubtedly stay with me for the rest of my life. From volunteering many years ago, to coming back to work as Project Manager, to taking over as Executive Director in 2014, I have done my best to not only look past myself and to put my blood and sweat into helping the land and water around me, but to set an example for what a positive, supportive workplace can be.
The opportunities provided to me through my work at ACAP Saint John have brought me everywhere from the smallest of community halls to talk about river floods, to national conferences on the future of biodiversity in Canada. From community cleanups with schoolchildren, to meetings at the United Nations, I have always sought to affect positive change for our local environment no matter how big or small the audience. As with any one of life’s great pursuits however, there inevitably comes a time to take that proverbial leap into a new challenge and continue to push oneself personally and professionally.
In order to take that leap I will be leaving ACAP Saint John at the end of June, 2020 to embark upon a new adventure by joining the WWF-International team as the International Coordinator for People Protecting Landscapes and Seascapes [PPLS], a Global Hub to promote and assist with activities that recognize and support the vital role Indigenous and local communities around the world play in protecting and safeguarding land and seascapes essential to global conservation goals. From coordinating teams across five continents, to delivering regional workshops to kick-off the initiative in locales from the high Arctic to central Africa, this is a remarkable opportunity to truly reconsider relationships and rebuild structures, and I could not be more excited to do this work while remaining based right here in Saint John.
Looking back I must admit I considered calculating the tens of thousands of trees we have planted, the hundreds of tonnes of litter our cleanups have removed, or the hectares of wetland or kilometres of aquatic habitat we have restored in my time at ACAP Saint John, but the reality is that my work here has meant much more to me than than any number could represent. My greatest accomplishment has been building a team and an organization that is not only greater than the sum of its parts, but also far greater than the person who put it together. From every high school intern, summer student and volunteer over the past decade, through to the incredible full-time staff I have had the pleasure of working with every day, it has always been people who are the drivers of change and the motivation I look to every day. That is why I am so thrilled to be taking the lessons learned here at home and applying them across the globe.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that even the best laid plans go often awry and we must all be prepared for the unexpected. Having people who can look beyond the challenge and see the opportunity inherent in it has become essential to not only surviving uncertainty but thriving as a result of it. That is why I am so optimistic about the future of ACAP Saint John, because of the team of brilliant, engaging individuals who were brought to the organization who see the same hope in this community as I do and who work every day to bring that hope to life.
This may be the end of one era but it marks the beginning of an exciting new one for both myself and for ACAP Saint John.
