Emily found her passion for ecology while growing up in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains in Southern California. Her curiosity about the natural world led her to complete her B.S. and M.S. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. Emily’s interest in coastal ecosystems prompted a northward move to Vancouver, BC, where she earned her Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Her thesis focused on understanding the effects of human activities, space, and time on eelgrass-associated invertebrate and microbial diversity.

Emily enjoys sharing her love for nature with others and teaching science to folks of all ages. She believes education and community engagement are at the core of implementing effective and long-lasting management of coastal ecosystems. She is thrilled to share her personal objectives with IMERSS: science is for everyone. As Chair of the Board of Directors, Emily aims to promote collaborations and effectively guide projects through completion.

Dana Ayotte is a Senior Inclusive Designer at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, where she collaborates with a team of designers, developers and others working to make digital technology more inclusive, equitable and accessible to all. After many visits to Galiano Island the natural beauty drew her in and she decided to stay for a while, during which time she volunteered with the Galiano Conservancy and was involved with the Biodiversity Galiano project. Learning about the local biodiversity fuelled her passion for ecological protection and restoration and so began her work on the Xetthecum Digital Ecocultural Mapping project where she contributes to the design of the mapping tool. Dana is an artist with a practice that often addresses themes of nature and the environment. Her work is interdisciplinary and includes printmaking, textiles, drawing and installation, with a focus on using repurposed materials and Earth-sustaining practices. Dana is grateful to live and work on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples also known as Vancouver, BC. Most days she can be found walking her dog in the forest. She is honoured to be a part of the IMERSS community!

Hannah comes from an interdisciplinary background spanning social sciences, writing, artistic movement-based practices and coastal/forest ecology. Merging a deep love for nature with a passion for creative expression, she has collaborated on a number of interdisciplinary projects, including the ecological dance film Verge: Dancing a Scarred and Sacred Landscape and the site-specific performance Water Bodies, which explored dance as a medium to embody the flow of Vancouver’s buried creeks.

During her seven years working with the Ancient Forest Alliance, Hannah helped to facilitate community-based outreach, communication and research around the conservation need for BC’s ancient forests. Her current role with the Southern Gulf Island-based Ecological Research Network involves creating materials for community engagement based on current and emerging forest and watershed research. In tandem with this work, Hannah is currently pursuing her PhD in Data Visualization at SFU, focusing on the communication of forest carbon data to convey forests’ role in mitigating climate change. 

With IMERSS, Hannah enjoys sharing tools and insights across disciplines, exploring ways to support the diverse communities of the Salish Sea bioregion.

Jeannine Georgeson is Coast Salish and Sahtu Dene. Galiano Island has been her home for most of her life. 

When her son Austin became involved with Biodiversity Galiano, his learning reminded her of what she was taught by her grandparents growing up. She was intrigued by the complementary aspects of Indigenous knowledge and ecology, so when she learned of IMERSS and the collaboration with Indigenous-led nonprofit Whiteswan Environmental, she was in awe! It folded together many of her values and interests—biodiversity, cultural importance of place and species, preservation of knowledge for future generations, action against climate change, community engagement and participation, and transboundary connections. It was these shared diverse interests that led to her engagement with IMERSS and other regional initiatives.

Jeannine plays a dynamic role in IMERSS, co-leading the Xetthecum ecocultural mapping pilot project, supporting the Hakai Sentinels of Change monitoring program, and coordinating the organization’s strategic operations. 

Jeannine lives with her partner Laurie and two of her three children, plus their cats Lilo and Stitch, Cronk the bearded dragon, Pug the Pug, some fish, as well as Austin’s collection of ants and a couple of spiders. Reading is one of her favourite hobbies. She feels most at peace when near the water, relaxing or exploring.

Raised in the Mt Baker foothills, and a full-time Saturna resident since 1988, nature has always been Pam’s home—and in particular, the Salish Sea Basin.  

A recent widow, Pam shares her home with her cat Milo, and Maggie and Ruffy, her Cardigan Corgis. If not in the woods or in her lab, you’ll find her out in her flower beds. Her motto is, “why grow vegetables when you can surround yourself with flowers instead?”

Initially specializing in fungal inventories of Saturna’s Winter Cover Provincial Park & Ecological Reserve 15, Pam was generously supported with grants from The Friends of Ecological Reserves. These projects ended when the land became part of Gulf Islands National Park. She also kept a loose running fungal inventory of the rest of Saturna, which became more important when her BC Parks work ended.

Pam’s latest big adventure is a contract to produce a BC Slime Mould Field Guide for the Royal British Columbia Museum—which she finds very exciting and kind of scary too!

To connect with Pam and view photos of her specimens, find her on the iNaturalist app.

Kris Krüg is a professional freelance photographer specializing in people, events and portraiture. He’s made photographs of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and both George Bushes—as well as rockstars, entrepreneurs & athletes the world over.

Kris has been involved in some top notch world-changing organizations, including the United Nations, the Access To Media Education Society, TckTckTck, Reel Youth, W2 Community Arts, Northern Voice, and many others, working in the areas of social justice, environment, and the media. He believes that using our gifts for positive change is where it’s at. The work he does for big events and corporate clients helps to fund his artistic & non-profit photography.

Kris has helped author two books:  Bit Torrent for Dummies and Killer Photography With Your iPhone, and also contributed by writing a chapter in Pathway: Critiques and Discourse In Olympic Research. He loves gardening, design, flying, sailing, and fishing, and lives with a big white sheepdog named Baby Jesus on Galiano Island.

An ecologist with over a decade of experience studying British Columbia’s interior and coastal ecosystems, Andrew’s passions lie at the intersection of natural history, community-based research, and biodiversity data science. Beginning with an apprenticeship to lichenologist Trevor Goward, his studies have since progressed through a dynamic career in the environmental sciences, working with NGOs, First Nations, academe, industry and government. Currently, he is collaborating with the Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound Biosphere Region Initiative to develop a biodiversity assessment framework, while pursuing a PhD in biodiversity data science in the O’Connor Lab at UBC.

Andrew is perhaps most well recognized for his commitments to community-based biodiversity research as the curator of the Biodiversity Galiano project, for which he was recently recognized with an Islands Trust Community Stewardship Award. Symbiosis is the notion that inspired his love of natural history to begin with, and it is this notion that continues to inspire his local and regional commitments to community science.

You can learn more about Andrew’s work on his personal website.