October 26, sessions 10-11
Session 10
Adapting and Thriving: Food Systems Resilience in the Face of Climate Change Challenges
Thursday, October 26, 2023
How will climate change impact Calgary’s food system? What food choices can you make to have an impact on climate change? Where does that align with The City of Calgary’s work to strengthen our local food system? Presentations will highlight why this is important, how climate will impact our food system, and how citizens as consumers can have an impact.
Emcee
Shane Gagnon, RPP, MCIP
Senior Planner, Climate Planning and Policy, The City of CalgaryShane is a Senior Planner with the City' of Calgary's Climate Planning and Policy team. He has worked for the City for 9 years with a focus on building climate-resilient low-carbon communities.
Speakers
Kristi Peters, B.A., MEM
Food Systems Planner, Climate Adaptation, The City of CalgaryKristi is a Food Systems Planner with The City of Calgary where she leads the implementation of the CalgaryEats! Food Action Plan and the development of the Food Resilience Strategy. Through strategic work (developing and implementing municipal food policy), programs, and partnerships, she works with City departments and external food system partners to create a more sustainable and resilient food system for Calgary.
Abby Landon, M.A.
Food Program Coordinator, Climate Adaptation, The City of CalgaryAbby is a Food Program Coordinator and focuses on implementing the CalgaryEATS! Food Action Plan. Additionally, she is supporting the development of a Food Resilience Strategy to build food systems that are prepared to meet the needs of Calgarians today and into the future.
Heather Ramshaw
Operations Manager, Highfield Regenerative FarmHeather Ramshaw is the Operations Manager at Highfield Farm. She has a background in community development and organic agriculture backed by a Bachelor’s of Environment, Honours International Development. She quickly, and permanently, fell into the food world after graduating and realizing what she truly loved was eating, and sharing food with others. Although organization and coordination come naturally to her, local resilient foods are her ultimate life objective.
Session 11
BenchmarkYYC Awards Ceremony
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Discover and celebrate the City’s top-performing buildings, learn more about the BenchmarkYYC program, and also find out how it’s helping the City more actively manage its emissions in accordance with its net zero emission targets for 2050!
Emcee
Marisa Orfei
Executive Director, Alberta Emerald FoundationMarisa is a creative and innovative leader who throughout her career has created and told important stories that impact positive change in our community. She is thrilled to be able to share Alberta’s most important story of the fantastic environmental initiatives happening here in Alberta! Marisa has extensive leadership, stakeholder relationship, and communications experience within government, philanthropic and not-for-profit organizations. Her career began at Alberta Environment and led to her role as Director of Communications for the Premier. Marisa spent 10 years with the Palix Foundation developing and implementing creative communications strategies for complex research. She produced award-winning resources that told the story of ‘How Brains Are Built’. Marisa also supports the community with her volunteer work as a board member for Radius Community Health & Healing.
Speakers
Councillor Evan Spencer
Calgary City Council, Ward 12Evan Spencer is a passionate and experienced community advocate, emerging policy nerd, family man, and a great neighbour. Evan lives and plays in Ward 12 as a father to two kids, husband, neighbour, and volunteer. He shares your passion for building outstanding communities.
Brent Downey
Corporate Environmental Specialist, Climate and Environment, The City of CalgaryBrent is a Corporate Environmental Specialist with the City of Calgary’s Community Energy Programs team. He has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of Guelph and a graduate certificate in Renewable Energy Technology, and he is a registered Project Management Professional and Certified Energy Manager. Brent currently manages BenchmarkYYC, the Downtown Retrofit Challenge, and represents The City in the development of the Emissions Neutral Building Information Exchange.
Daniel Eden
GRID Product Manager, OPEN TechnologiesDaniel is the product manager of GRID, OPEN’s flagship software for building energy benchmarking program management. In this role, he crafts the vision and roadmap of GRID by leveraging his deep knowledge of benchmarking and understanding the market direction. He is a professional engineer, and his background includes 8+ years of energy consulting experience. He was also an adjunct professor for the Building Energy Systems course for the Master of Engineering Leadership in High Performance Buildings at the University of British Columbia.