Pablo Beimler
Pablo is the Co-Senior Project Manager of UBC's Climate
Emergency, coordinating and convening around a comprehensive and just response to the climate crisis at
UBC. He is a Masters of Community and Regional Planning graduate in the
Indigenous Community Planning program at UBC and has a B.A. in
Environmental Economics & Policy, B.S. in Conservation & Resources Studies, and minor in Forestry
from the University of California, Berkeley. Pablo was formerly the Climate Hub @ UBC's Academic Lead and
has years of experience conducting wildfire research and facilitating community-led and focused wildfire
management, outreach, and youth education programming throughout Hawai'i and in South Lake Tahoe,
California. Pablo's role in Resilient-C served to increase community engagement with the Resilient-C
platform and research actions taken by BC coastal communities to mitigate and build resilience to wildfire
risk.
Anika Bursey
Anika is a masters student in the Master of Community and Regional Planning (MCRP) program at the
School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at UBC. She completed
her BSc at Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she was first introduced to disaster
resiliency. During her undergraduate research, she examined climate change adaptation strategies on the
Island of Newfoundland. As a research assistant on the Resilient-C project, Anika is helping to expand the
project to include additional communities along the East Coast of Canada.
David Righter
David is an Environmental Planner in his home state of Massachusetts, where he supports municipal efforts on
climate change adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. He graduated from UBC in May 2021 with his Masters from
the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES). His
master's research focused on the implementation of Municipal Climate Change Action Plans in coastal
communities of Nova Scotia. David's role with Resilient-C involved expanding the community actions data to
better understand and share the relevant strategies being implemented by communities across the platform.
Zeneca Kubota
Zeneca is a 2020 graduate of the UBC Geological Engineering
program. Through her undergraduate studies, she has become interested in natural hazard assessment and
management as well as the impacts of climate change on these hazards. She hopes to gain insight and
knowledge from her team members as she pursues a career in hazard resiliency. Her role in the Resilient-C
project consisted of collecting and summarizing the actions taken by British Columbian communities to reduce
and adapt to coastal risks.
Krista Forysinski
Krista is a Biologist in Integrated Planning at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), where she works on planning
for fish habitat restoration in the Pacific region. Prior to her work at DFO, she completed her Masters degree
at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES)
under the supervision of Dr. Stephanie Chang, and was a Research Assistant for Resilient-C. Her Master's
research focused on nature-based flood protection in the tidal marshes of the Fraser River estuary, where she
investigated the magnitude of wave attenuation over vegetation at Sturgeon Bank. As a Research Assistant, she
worked on developing vulnerability indicators for coastal communities within the platform.
Tugce Conger
Tugce is the Senior One Water Planner at the City of Vancouver. Her work
focuses on advancing planning and policy initiatives to treat all forms of water as a valuable resource using
nature-based solutions and integrated water management policies. She completed her PhD with Dr. Stephanie
Chang at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability
(IRES) of UBC. For her PhD dissertation research, she investigated the use of coastal green infrastructure
(CGI)—natural and nature-based flood and erosion protection methods—as a measure of sea level rise
adaptation. Her role in this project has been on the theoretical and methodological development of indicators,
data collection and stakeholder engagement.
Jackie Yip
Jackie is a Coastal Risk Scientist at Natural Resources Canada.
Before joining NRCan, she led the sea-level rise impact assessment for a multi-municipal project as a
Consequence Analyst at Kerr Wood Leidal. She completed her PhD with Dr. Stephanie Chang at the
Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) of UBC,
where she collaborated with the City of Vancouver to develop and apply a new approach to assess the
socio-economic impacts of sea-level rise and coastal flooding. Her role in this project focused on
methodological development and data analysis and collection.
Greg Oulahen
Greg Oulahen is an assistant professor in the Department of
Geography and Environmental Studies at Ryerson University. Greg’s research is focused on understanding
the factors that interact to produce unequal vulnerability to hazards.
Before joining Ryerson, Greg was a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Chang in the
School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British
Columbia. His work on the Resilient-C project investigated institutional factors that influence flood risk
and climate change adaptation in BC coastal communities.
Christopher Carter
Christopher graduated from the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning in May 2016. He focused on
integrated flood hazard management planning with the local government of Squamish, BC. As a Research
Assistant on the team for two years, he gathered local data on risk reduction, captured aerial imagery,
produced short films for the platform, presented at national conferences and contributed to our 2017 paper
on contextualizing institutional factors in indicator-based analysis. Since 2014 he has worked at the United
Nations level with the Resilience Academy and UNFCCC on Article 8 of the Paris Agreement on loss and damage.
Christopher founded Nunataq, a planning and filmmaking firm.
Michelle Marteleira
Michelle Marteleira completed her Masters degree at the University of British Columbia
School of Community and Regional Planning, and focused her research on
Indigenous resilience and international disaster management. Her role in the project involved reviewing social
vulnerability indicators and adapting the tool for other communities, including communities in the Maritimes
and Indigenous communities. Michelle has a Bachelor in Public Affairs and International Policy Management from
Carleton University and spent several years working with environmental and
women's empowerment organizations in Latin America. Michelle currently works at the
Canadian Red Cross; she spent time with the Humanitarian Diplomacy team from
2017-2020, and is now the Protection, Gender, Inclusion, and Engagement Specialist with the Emergency
Management and Health in Emergencies Teams. Michelle is also an international delegate with the Red Cross for
both Protection, Gender, and Inclusion, and Community Engagement and Accountability; her recent deployments
include Japan and Honduras.
Emily Gray
Emily completed her Master's degree at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning in 2017, where she
was a Research Assistant with Resilient-C for 2.5 years. While with Resilient-C, Emily was responsible for
reviewing and analyzing local government policies and regulations related to resilience and risk reduction,
which was used to generate community profiles for the platform. She also contributed toward the development of
a Knowledge Library and co-authored a peer-reviewed research article. Since Resilient-C, Emily has worked as a
Policy Researcher with the B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and Emergency Management B.C., as
well as a Community Planner with Urban Systems Ltd. and Urban Matters CCC. Emily is now a Registered
Professional Planner working in the Long Range Planning Division of the City of Burnaby.
