Advisors
Ashli Akins
Ashli Akins is a human rights and environmental advocate, artist, and social entrepreneur. When she was 21, she founded Mosqoy, an international charitable organization that works with highland indigenous communities of the Andean mountains in Peru. Mosqoy aims to mitigate the adverse effects of unsustainable tourism and development in the region by facilitating economic opportunities that incorporate community voice and nurture their threatened culture and environment...(Click to read more)
Tzeporah Berman
Tzeporah has been designing and winning campaigns in Canada and internationally for 25 years. She currently is International Program Director at Stand.Earth, the Chair of the Fossil Fuel NonProliferation Treaty Committee, and the Co Chair Globally Gas & Oil Network. She is also an Adjunct Professor of York University Faculty of Environmental Studies and works as a strategic advisor to a number of First Nations, environmental organizations and philanthropic foundations on climate and energy issues. She is the former co-director of Greenpeace International's Climate and Energy Program and Co-founder of ForestEthics. In 2016, Tzeporah was appointed by the Alberta Government to Co-Chair the Oil Sands Advisory Working Group tasked with making recommendations to implement climate change and cumulative impact policies and was listed as one of the 35 Most Influential Women in British Columbia by BC Business Magazine. In 2015, she was awarded the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in British Columbia. This year Tzeporah received the Climate Breakthrough Project Award and in 2013 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of British Columbia. She is the author of This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge.
Marlena Blavin
Marlena has had a successful career in the healing profession for over forty years, practising many modalities. She created The Threefold Method, combining Craniosacral Biodynamics, the Feldenkrais Method of Awareness Through Movement and Mindful Eating. She co-founded the first massage therapy program in a U.S. hospital, at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
In addition to her practice in the healing arts, Marlena is committed to healing the planet and sees the Jellyfish Project as an avenue to share her energy, ideas, wisdom, and passion for all beings – human and non-human.
Marlena is also a filmmaker, a presenter of highly acclaimed storytelling performances and keynote speeches, and she facilitates storytelling workshops across the United States and Canada with her husband, David Roche, inspirational humorist and author.
As a volunteer for the Sunshine Coast Hospice Society, she focuses on sitting at the bedside of those in the last stages of life, and also teaches the new volunteers gentle touch, as well as being an active member of the hospice volunteer outreach
committee.
William (Bill) Campbell
Bill is the founder and President of Skyway West Business Internet Services and a member of two Internet industry lobby groups: the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA Alliance), and the Canadian Network Operators Consortium (CNOC). Skyway West specializes in private networking and prioritizing, bonding and fail over of Internet access services. Living on BC’s Sunshine Coast and seeing first hand the environmental threats to our waters and lands motivated Bill to champion ocean sustainability and to use his skills and knowledge to work for a truly sustainable planet. Bill is a NCCP certified baseball and basketball coach.
Donna Grantis
Donna Grantis is an artist and guitarist from Tkaronto. From 2012 to 2016 Grantis performed and recorded with Prince as a member of his funk-rock trio 3RDEYEGIRL and supergroup New Power Generation. As a bandleader, she fronted a 5-piece electric jazz quintet and released the critically acclaimed debut album, DIAMONDS & DYNAMITE. Her newest project, Culture vs Policy, fuses musical soundscapes with thought-provoking dialogue concerning human impacts on the planet. As an EarthPercent artist, an endorser of the Music Declares Emergency declaration, and an alumna of the Creative Climate Leadership program, she is passionate about harnessing the power of music to create transformative cultural change.
Dan Kingsbury
Dan Kingsbury is a retired dentist living on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. He was president of The Jellyfish Project (JFP) from 2013-2014 and has been involved with the JFP since its inception in 2011. He is a member of the Suzuki Elders, a voluntary association of self-identified elders working with and through the David Suzuki Foundation. Suzuki Elders mentor, motivate and support other elders and younger generations in dialogue and action on environmental issues through educating, communicating, connecting, and non-partisan advocacy.
Jessica Lansfield, PhD
Born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Jessica’s life and learning have been highly influenced by the north, the beauty of nature, and the exploration of the earth’s wide range of cultures, climates and conditions. Understanding various aspects of health and the human condition have spurred both her academic and professional careers. With undergraduate degrees in Applied Human Nutrition from the University of Guelph and Therapeutic Recreation from the University of Waterloo, along with a master’s degree in Therapeutic Relationships from the University of Waterloo in partnership with Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, and a doctorate degree from the University of Victoria’s innovative and research-intensive Social Dimensions of Health program, Jessica’s understanding of health has become increasingly holistic and ecological. Her transdisciplinary doctoral research filled gaps in the literature concerning the interconnections between social engagement, the social determinants of health, and the ecosystems perspective. Outside of academia, over the past 15 years, Jessica as worked as a consultant for various not-for-profit and non-governmental organizations, and government departments. Her work has spanned from educational, art-based and environmental initiatives, to long-term care and age-friendly strategies, to therapeutic recreation and hospital settings, to music programs, film projects and festivals, to bio-acoustics research, conservation, and social justice societies. Jessica is the past executive director of The Jellyfish Project and has been held an advisory role to the project since December 2013. She currently splits her time between the Yukon Territory’s stunning mountain ranges and British Columbia’s beautiful coastlines, as time in nature grounds and inspires her life’s work.
Robbie McFarland
Robbie is a CPA and works as the Financial Controller for a Tech Company in Victoria. He grew up on the Sunshine Coast where his love of nature took shape among the ocean and the trees. He has had a couple of profound moments impact his life and lead him towards environmentalism. The first was in 2006 when he saw Al Gore's documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," and the second was in 2013 when he saw Mindil Beach present the Jellyfish Project live to students in a Toronto High School. He hopes to help influence businesses to use more sustainable practices in order to create a better future for everyone.
Laura Mitic
Laura Mina Mitic is a musician, songwriter and music manager spending her time between Victoria and Toronto. She has been playing music since the age of nine, learning the violin followed by the guitar. Soon after, she began playing in bands and became hooked on sharing the stage with other musicians to create one sonorous sound.
Fast forward a decade and she's been actively living a career in music via her projects Carmanah and Miina. Her main passion is mixing music with conversations pertaining to the health of our planet, our communities and ourselves. She has delivered over 100 presentations to youth via The Jellyfish Project. Her band has been running their tour vehicle on used-vegetable oil since 2015. During the pandemic they converted a 1972 Greyhound Bus into a tiny home/tour bus which completed its inaugural tour from Victoria to Toronto in the Fall of 2022.
Laura Mina has a degree in History with a minor in Environmental Studies from the University of Victoria where she also ran varsity Cross-Country and Track for five years.
Cathy Moss
Cathy has spent her career communicating with youth and young children on a variety of platforms. She started out as a puppeteer for the PEI Puppet People then went on to develop children’s magazines for
Knowledge Network and McDonald’s Corp before switching to writing for TV. She’s the creator of Doggy
Day School, a Canadian and Brazilian co-production and cocreator of Franny’s Feet for Family Channel.
She story-edited W Network’s You Me and the Kids for it’s five-year run. Her most recent creator credits
are CBC’s Gumboot Kids and Count On Me, for Brazil’s TV Cultura. She’s written episodes for many
children’s series including Sesame Park, Franklin the Turtle, The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That
and Momolu. In between TV jobs Cathy has developed educational material for youth for a number of
organisations. She’s served on the board of the Fringe Festival, the Jewish Film Festival and CirKids,
operated a Community Kitchen out of Little Mountain Neighbourhood House and spent several years as
a volunteer for Frontier College’s Learning and Literacy Program.
Joel Solomon
Joel Solomon is Chair of Renewal Funds, Canada's largest social venture capital firm. With $240m assets under management, Renewal Funds invests in organic food, green products, and environmental and social innovations. Joel is a Senior Advisor with RSF Social Finance, a 2012 TEDxVancouver speaker, founding member of Social Venture Network, Business for Social Responsibility, the Tides Canada Foundation, and is Board Chair of Hollyhock.
Solomon puts the green back into money. He rocks the foundations of how we look at money. He educates, he informs, and he will create a movement. Future generations will refer to Solomon’s ‘The Clean Money Revolution’ as a seminal reference for the institutionalization of the Green Economy.
Jon Williams
Hi, my name is Jon.
I’m originally from a town called Malmesbury in the South of England, but I now call Victoria on Vancouver Island, Canada, home.
My Grandmother grew up on the island and when she passed many years ago my parents and I came to Toronto for a family gathering. It was there I met some of the most incredible souls and welcoming hearts. I returned to Canada that summer. I then fell in love with the island and knew it must be here I continue to grow up and find myself.
I spent the last ten years as a broadcaster for a Modern Rock radio station called The Zone @ 91-3. But recently left to start my own station/foundation hybrid .
What was That? is a radio station that could take us in any direction. A hub of new music built around rock, hip hop, alternative, punk, reggae, and soul. There are no restrictions on a station that specializes in the most exciting new music being released daily. What was That? is a radio station, foundation hybrid. Free to listen to all, but with options that also support the arts and mental health wellness in our community.
