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Kicking Off The Festival

Date & Time
Tuesday, November 2, 2021, 6:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Description

Join us to kick off this year’s Festival of What Works in ceremony and style. Hear from Amalaxa Louisa Smith – Counselor and Haisla Elder – who will welcome everyone and share the legacy of her brother, Wa’xaid, Cecil Paul’s Magic Canoe. Our Festival Director, Kel Moody, and Salmon Nation partners, will share what this week has to offer. And Annita McPhee, former three-term president of the Tahltan Nation in British Columbia, will share our community agreements for how we can connect during this incredible upcoming week. Join us!

 

Session Type
Presentation
Rewatch On Demand
Kel Moody (they/them) is a community steward and placemaker. They have a passion for convening communities and leading teams to create meaningful experiences through events and programs. They have worked in and around the B Corp community, using business as a force for good, since 2016 as a woodworker, project manager, and consultant. They serve on both the B Local PDX board and Build Local Alliance board based out of Portland, OR. Kel deeply believes that developing a strong sense of place is one of the most meaningful pathways to purpose. This has led them to dive into working with Salmon Nation as the Director of the Festival of What Works. They currently live in the traditional territory of the Cowlitz and Chinook tribes or what is now called Vancouver, WA, with their wife and toddler, taking moments to retreat to the forest as often as possible.
Kel Moody
Cheryl Chen is a systems thinker, connector, and tactical strategist with over a decade of experience in cultivating teams and utilizing technology to disrupt systems and empower communities. As a trained human geographer at heart, people have always been at the center of her work. Cheryl’s expertise is in building for-purpose organizations from the ground up that challenge business-as-usual systems — in both how they operate, and the impact they seek to create. She was recently Operations Director with Future of Fish, an international NGO focused on ending overfishing by developing strategic and investable triple-bot- tom-line innovations in under-served coastal communities worldwide. Before that she worked with Point 97 and Ecotrust, where she designed and orchestrated large-scale multi-stakeholder initiatives centered on the development and implementation of marine spatial planning technology solutions. Cheryl received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife Megan Chen, and two dogs.
Cheryl Chen
Counselor and Haisla Elder – descendent of Chief G’psgolox. Louisa is a residential school survivor and a long-time champion of environmental and community health in the Skeena Region of northern B.C.
https://www.thenorthernview.com/community/heart-of-our-city-louisa-smith-finds-home-within/
Amalaxa Louisa Smith
Annita McPhee is from the Tahltan Tlingit Nations located in Northwestern British Columbia. She served three terms as President of the Tahltan Central Council, and is recipient of numerous awards for her vision and leadership, including The Leadership Award from Ecotrust for her work in saving the Sacred Headwaters, and Indigenous National Native Role Model. She serves as Advisor and Director on several national and provincial boards including the Legal Services Society, Vancouver Board of Trade’s Aboriginal Affairs Committee, BC Hydro's Strategic Aboriginal Engagement Committee and the Minister of Aboriginal Relations Advisory Council on Aboriginal Women among others. She founded Annita Mcphee Strategies in 2015, quickly establishing the organization as a leading conference provider and community facilitator for First Nations, Indigenous women, industry and governmental bodies.She holds a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Social Work, and recently earned her diploma in International Human Rights and Advocacy with the United Nations Indigenous Women's Global Leadership School in New York.
Annita McPhee