Larissa Stendie

Larissa brings more than 15 years of international and Canadian experience in sustainability research, community engagement, project management, and local economic development. Since 2018, she has been a co-founding member of Roots to Roofs, and led engagement, communications, and program coordination developing high performance, affordable homes with CleanTech Community Gateway and T’Sou-ke Centre for Sustainability. She is also presently a Senior Policy Analyst with the BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.

Larissa holds an interdisciplinary Masters in Culture, Environment and Sustainability (political ecologist) from the University of Oslo, a BA in Political Sciences from University of Alberta, and International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) certification. In Norway, she was on the executive of the Arne Naess Chair/Oslo Sustainability Symposia and researched for The Lancet Commission on Global Governance (Political Determinants) of Health. She has articles in French, Norwegian, and Swedish publications, was involved with a book on climate psychology and communications, and co-authored a chapter in "First World Petro-Politics"(L.Adkin, ed.). 

Returning to Canada, Larissa was: the Energy and Climate Campaigner for Sierra Club BC; a research manager for Parkland Institute (University of Alberta); part of CCPA-BC's Corporate Mapping Project; managed BCSEA's Climate Leadership Program; directed engagement and communications with the RenuWell Project (converting orphaned oil and gas wells to solar PV); served on the Board of Iron and Earth working for a just transition to clean energy; and was an Analyst with Pembina Institute's "Renewables in Remote Communities" project.  Along this path, she also had adventures as administrator of an arctic diamond exploration camp, an oil patch EMR with a helicopter ambulance, a designing goldsmith for 6 years, ran a CIDA-funded diamond mine land reclamation project in Sierra Leone, worked on a documentary project in Palestine, advised a rural community economic development project in The Gambia, and raced a sailboat across the Atlantic. These days, she likes walking her dog with her boyfriend and looking at wildflowers.