Our team

We are expert process designers, facilitators, engagement specialists, and strategists, united in our commitment to creating a more just, sustainable, and resilient world that values healthy people and the planet.

Core team

Kerri Klein, MA

(she/her)

Co-Founder and Managing Director

kerri@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Kerri
Insightful, intuitive, grounded, uber-organized.

Her talents

Taking big concepts and making them accessible
Working collaboratively
Distilling simplicity from complexity
Creating clarity and inspiring confidence.

Bio
Kerri is a learning specialist, facilitator and coach who has worked for the last 20 years designing and leading collaborative planning, capacity building and engagement processes with a wide range of sectors and communities. She has a knack for working with diverse teams to identify and name underlying patterns and harvest important insights for positive change.

Kerri has extensive experience designing and leading complex capacity building and engagement processes around critical social and environmental issues. She brings specific expertise and experience in supporting multiple sectors to build resilience to the health impacts of climate change and address climate equity. She also has been a project manager, designer, evaluator and engagement lead on a number of recent innovation projects, including two 18-month innovation labs, a number of policy engagement initiatives for the provincial government. Kerri is an approved coach with Innoweave Canada’s developmental evaluation, impact measurement, and collective impact streams, and certified in Human Systems Dynamics.

She has an MA in Environmental Education and Communications with a specialization in climate change leadership..

Stacy Barter, M.Ed.

(she/her)

Co-Founder and Director

stacy@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Stacy
Exquisite communicator, creatively strategic, sets sights on highest quality, resourceful.

Her talents

Designing and facilitating learning
Finding common ground amongst diverse viewpoints
Can hold the container for both the big and small picture
Great intuition about what is at the heart of “stuckness” and how to design processes to break through.

Bio
Stacy is a learning specialist, facilitator, evaluator, and coach who has worked for over 20 years with a wide range of communities, non-profit, and public sector organizations in Canada and Latin America. Specializing in process and program design, Stacy has led numerous multi-faceted community change initiatives from the ground up, and has developed a diverse array of training and capacity building programs to support changemakers. Her recent work focuses on leadership development for multi-sector collaboration, community resilience, and building collective impact. She is an Innoweave Collective Impact coach, a certified Human Systems Dynamics Practitioner, and the lead facilitator for the Building Resilient Neighbourhoods initiative. Stacy holds a M. Ed. from Simon Fraser University specializing in Adult Education, community development, and organizational learning.

Michelle Colussi

(she/her)

Co-Founder &
Senior Consultant

michelle@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Michelle
Practical, laser-focused, collaborative, experienced.

Her talents

Helping groups get unstuck and come up with an actionable plan
Finding practical ways through sticky situations
Sourcing the best of the group
Incredible wealth of resources and connections

Bio
Originally trained as a teacher, Michelle brings diverse experience working in communities in recreation, youth justice, mental health, the arts and social enterprise. Between 1997 and 2013 she worked in the field of community economic development in Canada bringing strong organizational and community development, facilitation, coaching and training skills to support First Nations, rural communities and NGO’s to build capacity and champion community wealth. She was a key member in the research and development of Canada’s first Community Resilience Manual in 2000 and worked with the Government of Botswana to adapt the tool and train facilitators there. In 2010 she became Canada’s first Transition Town trainer and seeded that movement in 10 cities in Canada. She co-founded Transition Victoria and later Building Resilient Neighbourhoods Society before co-founding SHIFT Collaborative in 2017.

Currently Michelle’s practice at SHIFT is focused on evaluation, strategic planning and facilitation of collaborative systems change work through collective impact and social innovation labs. She continues to serve community on several boards including the Canadian Community Economic Development Network and she lives in Victoria with her husband and son.

Deirdre Goudriaan, MA

(she/her)

Co-Founder &
Senior Consultant

deirdre@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Deirdre
Compassionate, innovative, solid, resourceful.

Her talents

Getting to the heart of issues when facilitating group dialogue
Always finding a way to move forward
Creating inclusive spaces
Brings everything she’s got — her whole self and extensive resources

Bio
Deirdre is a process designer, developmental/principle-based evaluator and researcher, facilitator and coach who has worked extensively with all scales of community and government. She leads collaborative design processes and has worked with numerous sectors, business leaders and NGO’s locally, provincially, nationally, and internationally.

For the last 12 years, Deirdre has worked in organizational development, collaborative change processes to address wicked problems and design innovative solutions.

Deirdre has a Master’s Degree in Leadership and Training and has focused on conflict resolution and negotiation and trauma informed work that helps communities heal. This work spans from focused trauma informed approaches and approaches that center equity and conflict constructively. Deirdre is currently focused on supporting the Ministry of Agriculture in planning work and one of her passions is food systems work She is an Innoweave Collective Impact coach. She is certified as a Human Systems Dynamics practitioner and has been certified by Acumen in Human Centred Design and Prototyping.

Olive Dempsey

(she/her)

Director

olive@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Olive
Creative, strategic, committed to results, compassionately rigorous.

Her talents

Supporting groups to see through the ‘noise’ and identify what matters most.
Communicating complex concepts in accessible and engaging ways.
Working collaboratively as a committed thought partner and coach.
Courageous engagement with conflict and difference.

Bio

Olive brings 20 years of experience in both staff and consultant roles, leading and collaborating to support the human systems side of change across the public, non-profit, and post-secondary sectors. Her practice is oriented around a desire to be in right relationship with self, with equity-deserving communit(ies), with the Indigenous peoples on whose lands she lives, and with Earth’s living systems. This has led her to work on projects that range from designing an award-winning public engagement process for the City of Vancouver, to co-facilitating complex multi-stakeholder engagement processes for the Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, to tailor-made strategic planning and coaching processes for leaders, teams and organizations working on some of today’s most important and complex issues. Recent projects include: process design and facilitation for municipal climate communications strategies; strategic planning for nationally recognized arts organizations; and leadership coaching for a regional multi-interest holder watershed network.

She is an instructor in strategic dialogue and engagement for climate adaptation in Simon Fraser University’s Climate Action Certificate, and has designed and taught courses on dialogue, engagement, leadership and systems change for Royal Roads University, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, the University of British
Columbia, as well as offered guest lectures to engagement practitioners and other change-makers across Canada.

With an ongoing commitment to learning and development, Olive has a SSHRC-funded MA in Environmental Education and Leadership from Royal Roads University (2014) and a BA in Communications from Simon Fraser University (2005) She holds certifications in Human Systems Dynamics (2019), Culturally Responsive Evaluation (2019), Co-Active Coaching (2012), and Authentic Leadership (2011), as well as in-depth training in Deep Democracy conflict engagement practices (2015).

Devon Francis

(she/her)

Administrative
Coordinator

devon@shiftcollaborative.ca

Why people love working with Devon
She is uber organized and generous about sharing that with others.

Her talents

Holding the many moving parts of projects
Bringing attention to the details
Advancing dialogue with thoughtful questions
Listening with compassion, summarizing, and identifying themes

Bio
Devon has spent her life using her organizational skills to support environmental and social causes. Whether working in non-profit administration, research, or community organizing, she loves the behind-the-scenes work of supporting efficient and thriving teams. She is thrilled to bring these experiences to support SHIFT with administrative coordination, workshop hosting, data analysis, and more.

Devon holds a bachelor’s degree from Quest University Canada with a focus on the intersections of environmental science and social justice. She is particularly passionate about advocating for climate solutions that meet the socio-cultural and economic needs of communities.

In addition to her work with SHIFT, Devon organizes with Our Time Vancouver, a youth-led climate justice group, and facilitates with Out in Schools, leading workshops about sexual orientation and gender identity for students and educators.