our awesome team
EYA Staff Members:
Hartley Rosen
Managing Director, hartley@eya.ca
Chandra Chinatambi
Financial Manager, chandra@eya.ca
Matthew Kemshaw 
Coordinator of Community Nursery & Co-Coordinator of Growing Kids matthewk@eya.ca
Matthew coordinates our Growing Kids and Community Nursery projects. He has six years experience working in Urban Agriculture and has helped dozens of schools to develop food gardens on site. He is also a passionate advocate for food production in public commons and has worked to develop and maintain several large food forests on public lands in both Victoria and Vancouver.
Kristina Parusel
Green Graffiti Coordinator kristina@eya.ca
Kristina works with Environmental Youth Alliance to implement, maintain and bring to life the living walls in the Green Graffiti program. Together with residents, she is facilitating the installation of six living walls in Vancouver, many of them located on supportive housing buildings in the downtown eastside. Her background includes work in community engagement, urban agriculture and group facilitation with community-focused organizations including Vancity and Vancouver Public Space Network.
Jodi Peters
Project Coordinator jodipeters@eya.ca
Jodi co-coordinates the EYA’s Skills Link program. She feels very privileged to be a part of the journeys of so many amazing youth who are seeking meaningful, good work to do for our society, the environment and themselves. She facilitates all sorts of skill building workshops, teaches permaculture principles and applications, and urban agriculture techniques. She also helps oversee EYA’s Urban Seeds program, and works with volunteers and staff to save and process seed from the EYA’s Youth Garden. She loves spending time out of the office, picking up coffee grounds to make into compost, working in the beautiful urban green spaces that EYA is involved in creating and maintaining, and she's always delighted to see the creatures big and small that share these spaces with us!
Alaina Thébault
Co-Coordinator - Growing Kids alaina@eya.ca
Alaina is the newest member of the EYA team as the co-coordinator of our Growing Kids Program, and is passionate about creating and maintaining outdoor, hands-on learning spaces. Coming from managing multiple farmers markets and pocket markets in the region, Alaina is dedicated to connecting folks with where their food comes from and the living systems that provide it. She is constantly inspired by kids’ instinctive understanding of our role in the natural world, and her experience with Growing Kids gives her much hope for a sustainable future. She has experience facilitating various food security workshops and events and is happiest with dirty hands and feet. When she’s not in classrooms or gardens, Alaina can be found tending to her honeybees or on her yoga mat.
Julia Thiessen
Project Coordinator
juliat@eya.ca
Julia can often be found peering under rocks with kids, pondering earthworms. When she’s not in the garden she can be found coordinating the Skills Link youth internship program. This program provides an important outlet for interns to explore their future, and Julia is integral in creating a safe supportive space for youth. Her work at EYA is a natural extension of her passion for teaching and using nature to support well-being. Julia shares her interest in healing by facilitating workshops that explore herbalism and our relationship to plants. She is still on the look-out for a wild edible that tastes like potato chips.
Claire Wooton
Volunteer Coordinator volunteer@eya.ca
Claire coordinates EYA's volunteer program and also runs the Urban Seeds program. Having benefited greatly from participating in Outward Bound and volunteer environmental conservation programs as a teenager, Claire considers herself fortunate to now be in a position where she can help promote the development of such youth-focused, environmentally-based programs. Drawing on her background in science communication and workshop facilitation, Claire enjoys leading groups of volunteers in EYA’s gardens and introducing youth to issues of food security and urban agriculture.
To call us...
604 689 4446
EYA Board of Directors:
Rebecca Cuttler
Rebecca Cuttler is one of EYA's newest board members, joining in 2012. A certified Permaculture Designer, she is the author of gardenproduce.ca, a blog about the practical and philosophical underpinnings of the urban sustainability movement. Whether it be through raising honeybees at Cottonwood community gardens, befriending local farmers and fishers, and selling her home-grown vegetables at Kitsilano’s West Side Pocket Market, she is passionate about growing food and helping to create healthy communities.
As a member of the small team that helped to open Simon Fraser University's new Woodward's campus on Vancouver's Downtown East Side, Rebecca is interested in learning about how businesses, artists and individuals can work together to create thriving communities. She is currently working as a consultant with several new retail businesses to help build a sense of community around each store, find strategies to reduce waste, and create public programming. Most of all, she loves playing in her garden.
Alexandra Gunn
Alexandra Gunn is excited to join the Board in 2012 as she is passionate about sustainability and empowerment. She has worked on organic farms around the world and volunteers at many environmental organizations. Alexandra has a background in business administration, sociology and anthropology. After graduating from university, she worked at post-secondary institutions, a non-profit organization as a community outreach coordinator and ran her own business. She is currently working in government focusing on the clean tech sector. She has received the Soroptimist Youth Citizenship Award and Volunteer Vancouver’s Leaders of Tomorrow Award and helped operate a student-based company which was recognised as one of the best managed Junior Achievement companies in Canada. In her spare time, she likes to hike, climb mountains, volunteer, do yoga and be in nature.
Emily Hoffpauir
Emily joined the board in 2010 and has really enjoyed getting involved in EYA events and being a part of the fundraising committee. Emily recently went back to school and completed her post grad certification in Environmental Communication and Public Awareness. Her day job is coordinating volunteer, work/travel, and homestay programs for international visitors. Her passions are environmental issues and animal welfare and she loves swimming, cycling, manatees and gallivanting around the world.
Jenny Ling
Jenny is a board member who is extremely grateful to work with and learn from everyone at EYA. Outside of board meetings Jenny spends her free time with Chinese brush painting, stone carving, fruit tasting, various other craft projects and occasionally trying to train her cat to become a ninja.
Jessica Moerman
Jessica Moerman has been on the board since early 2009 and enjoys learning about all of the exciting initiatives EYA is involved in. She works at the South Vancouver Neighbourhood House with newcomer youth and is currently completing her MA in Community Development through UVic. She and her boyfriend tore out their lawn in front and back to put in a combination of a vegetable and flower garden. They enjoy their garden, but she thinks that the slugs, bees, birds, and neighbourhood cats enjoy it more.
Jonathan Reimer
Jonathan joined the EYA board in 2010. He's been involved in EYA's policy development efforts, fundraising, and board recruitment. He's interested in helping organizations through strategic planning and operational improvements so programs can better deliver services that support their targeted communities. Jonathan works in the Lower Mainland Health Authorities as a Strategic Planner and Project Manager. When he's not working, he's enjoying time with his family or thinking about baseball.
Raseel Sehmi
Raseel Sehmi is a board member with three years of global work experience invested in developing communications and building strategic partnerships to support sustainable development initiatives. She is currently the Regional Campaign Coordinator for the Aga Khan Foundation Canada. Raseel completed her Masters in International Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, U.K., and her Bachelors in Political Science & Sociology from UBC. She loves to travel and learn about different cultures, and she has joined the board of EYA because she is interested in developing local-global links to promote environmental and social change initiatives.
Robyn Spencer
Robyn has been with EYA since 2004 when she got the opportunity to work on a DFAIT sponsored, EYA hosted internship in Budapest, Hungary. Since that time she has stuck close by; as an employee she had stints with in the Green Workplace Program, the Urban Mobility Program and helping to coordinate the Environmental Entrepreneurship Program in 2006-2007. She joined the board in 2008 and loves getting to be a part of the many amazing programs and projects EYA puts out. Robyn works as a planner and community development practitioner with EcoPlan in Vancouver, and is currently completing her MBA in community economic development.
Christina Thiele
Christina Thiele joined EYA’s board in 2012 and is thrilled to be a part of an organization that empowers people to connect to our planet and the well-being of other people. Her background is in communications and publishing and she currently heads up the development and implementation of the Society for Children and Youth of BC’s child and youth rights projects.
Marieke van der Velden
Marieke joined EYA in March 2012, following a recent move to the West Coast. Eager to get involved with the environmental community and combine her skills with her passions, she is looking forward to helping the organization grow and thrive. Two years of world travel inspired and strengthened Marieke's devotion to the environment, community gardening and animal welfare. She spends her weekdays working for a Vancouver not-for-profit in the health sector, and her free time dancing, volunteering, exploring the great outdoors of her new home province, and living a healthy life.
David Wotherspoon
In his day job David is a commercial litigator and helps people solve business disputes, typically involving technology, intellectual property and defamation. A former news photographer, David is also interested in non-profit governance. In addition to joining the EYA board, he is on the boards of Peace Geeks, Collingwood School, and was previously a member of Emily Carr University Board of Governors, among others.. David has recently started doing volunteer work with Pivot Legal.
