Niigani Miinigowiziiwin Accelerator Program

Dr. Melanie Goodchild

Dr. Melanie Goodchild, moose clan, is an Anishinaabekwe (Ojibway woman) from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg First Nation and Ketegaunseebee (Garden River) First Nation.  She is a systems thinking and complexity scholar who offers a uniquely Anishinaabe approach to making sense of society’s most entrenched problems.  

Dr. Goodchild is Vice President Indigenous Knowledge, Scholarship and Research at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig, an Indigenous post-secondary institute located in Baawaating (place of the rapids), within the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy. 

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.

Eva Pomeroy

Eva Pomeroy is Research Lead and Senior Faculty at the Presencing Institute, an awareness-based action research organization at the intersection of science, consciousness, and profound social and organizational change. She is Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada and core faculty for MITx Online’s u-lab: Leading from the Emerging Future, an online-to-offline transformative change program based on Otto Scharmer’s Theory U. Eva is Co-Founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change, whose research focuses on expanded epistemologies and social field approaches to transformative learning and systems change. She  has published in journals such as the International Journal of Lifelong Education, Journal of Transformative Education, OD Review and Journal of Applied Behavioural Sciences. Eva lives in Montreal/Tiohtià:ke with her husband and two sons.

Vanessa Reid

Vanessa Reid is an architect of cultural evolution who works at the intersection between systems and soul. She co-founded the Living Wholeness Institute which works around the world to co-create cultures and communities of practice dedicated to systems transformation amidst complexity, collapse and chaos. Vanessa has Masters degrees in both architecture and process-oriented psychology and brings her depth of practice and wild perspective to her work with the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning and the Trailblazery’s Hedge School, lauded for its ‘exploration of the possible.’ She is the former executive director of Santropol Roulant and publisher of ascent magazine. A translocal practice leader, 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.

Carianne Agawa

Booshoo (hello). Zhaa Ankwad Kwe dzhinikaaz minaawa Carrianne Agawa.  MichigeN n’doodem.  Wiigwaaskiniga n’doonjiba.  Anishinaabe Kwe minaawa Windigokaan n’daaw. 

​ellow Cloud Womyn is my spirit name and Carrianne Agawa is my given one.  My clan is the turtle and I come from the land of the birch trees, but this is also known as Whitefish River First Nation (WRFN).  I am an Ojibwe womyn and a Windigokaan (contrary). My father, Paul Jacko (ba) was an Ojibwe from WRFN, and my mom Heather (ba) was English, German and wee bit of Iroquois (one of her grandmothers was Iroquois). I grew up on the land and maintain a strong relationship with it; land grounds me and will always remind me of who I am.  

​​With a Master’s in Education, an Honors degree in Psychology, along with many other certificates and life experiences, I skillfully infuse Indigenous and Western knowledge in the work I do and love as a consultant, an artist, an art therapist student, a writer, and a storyteller.   

My passions involve running half and full marathons, sewing, and kayaking which keep me grounded in all that I do.