Our team.
Nicholas Scott
CEO & Principal Consultant
Fredericton, Canada
Nick Scott is an intuitive leader with a passion for innovation and problem-solving. He has a proven track record of leading transformative projects in Canada, New Brunswick, and the UAE. Nick's expertise, experience, and dedication to excellence make him an invaluable asset to any organization looking to drive positive change.
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Since 2012 Nick Scott has been leading transformational change in the public sector. Most recently, he worked on a massive Life Event Service Transformation project in the UAE. Before that, he was the Director of Innovation Services at the Government of Canada’s Digital Academy at the Canada School for Public Service. In this role, Nick led the Digital Accelerator Programme, Digital Experimentation, Digital Products, and Digital Events and Engagement teams. Formerly, Nick worked at the Government of New Brunswick as Executive Director of Open Government and Innovation. In this role, he led Innovation and Design Services, established an Innovation Team, a collaborative workspace and a public innovation framework, facilitating initiatives addressing a wide array of public policy challenges, including mobility, literacy, second language acquisition, natural resource development, municipal reform, and child protection. Previously in his role as Executive Director of the NB Social Policy Research Network, Nick launched the GovMaker Conference to explore the theory and practice of public innovation and co-founded NouLAB; a public and social innovation lab facilitating collaborative, multi-sector problem-solving. Nick is a part-time lecturer at the University of New Brunswick, where he teaches Science and Technology Studies, and Leadership for Social Innovation. In the Middle East, Nick served as a jury member for the Hamdan bin Mohammed Smart Government Award at the Dubai Model Centre between 2017 - 2020.
Joanna Nickerson
COO & Senior Consultant
Winnipeg, Canada
Joanna Nickerson is a highly creative and strategic thinker known for her capacity to create experiences and build community. She has been instrumental in the creation of various social venture accelerators and has launched a number of her own successful organizations over her career. Her work is driven by a fierce curiosity and passion to see lasting positive change.
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Joanna Nickerson is an accomplished leader in social innovation, systems thinking, and impact entrepreneurship. With a proven ability to build community and nurture relationships across sectors, she is passionate about collaborative work to create meaningful, lasting change.
Joanna has an MBA from the University of New Brunswick and is an alumnus of the Getting to Maybe: Systems Change program with Dr. Francis Westley.
She is a facilitator, strategist, mentor and #shiftdisturber.
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Our associates.
Jerry Koh
Toronto, Canada
Mission Innovation Advisor
Jerry Koh works with purpose-driven organizations to address complex challenges in communities and cities. From building inclusive smart cities, accelerating municipal climate solutions adoption, and fostering community well-being and growth, to youth development. He uses strategic foresight, systems thinking and user-centric design approaches to help organizations grow partnerships and turn complex problems into actionable opportunities.
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Jerry is a systems innovation and systemic design leader with over 20 years of experience spanning governments, nonprofits, and multinational corporations in Canada, the US, and Asia. He was previously the Director of MaRS Solutions Lab - Canada’s first public and social innovation lab at MaRS Discovery District.
Emilie Chaisson
Designer & Facilitator
Kampala, Uganda
With a Bachelors in Leadership Studies from the University of New Brunswick and a Master’s in Global Affairs from the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, Emilie has navigated complex development and humanitarian challenges through her work with Venture 2 Impact, AIDS-Free World and Grand Challenges Canada. Having led projects in the non-profit, private, and public sectors, including an experiential learning program called Future New Brunswick, Emilie excels at developing cross-sectoral partnerships and using a human-centered approach to problem-solving.
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Jen Nickerson
Vice President & Somatic Coach
Fredericton, Canada
Jen is a psychotherapist who is passionate about integrating somatic intelligence and creative contemplative practices into her work. She believes that these modalities offer powerful tools for exploring the deeper aspects of self and relational dynamics.
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Jen is particularly drawn to the challenges presented by liminal spaces - those difficult, in-between stages of transformation that can be both disorienting and transformative. She strives to be a heart-centered companion and guide for individuals and groups as they navigate these complex and often confusing spaces.
Lewis Muirhead
Evaluation & Facilitation Designer
Salt Spring Island, Canada
Lewis brings head and heart to his work through considerate facilitation and consultative engagements. His background in leadership and innovation practice allows him to pull from a deep toolkit. Lately he has been deepening his understanding and use of narrative has an evaluative method.
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Lewis is a systems thinker whose work centres around facilitation and evaluation to support change initiatives. His main motivator is bringing diverse voices together to adapt to complex challenges through facilitation and evaluation. After completing a masters in sustainability leadership, he spent 4 years on the territory of the Mi'kmaq peoples in New Brunswick working for the University of New Brunswick's NouLAB program, where he programmed various social and public policy innovation labs. Since returning to BC in 2020, he has run a consultancy, Alternate Future Design Group, through which he has partnered with TELUS Health for Good, McConnell's Climate Change initiatives, the PEI Government, the Tsilhqot'in National Government and a host of others. Lewis holds an BA from UBC and an MSc from the Blekinge Technical Institute in Sweden. Lewis is a settler, born on the lands of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-waututh peoples in Vancouver. He currently resides on the ancestral homelands of the Hul’qumi’num and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples, Salt Spring Island, with his wife, son and border collie. In his spare time he enjoys volunteering on water related projects, gardening and playing music.
Jes Coverini
Branding Specialist, Social Change Educator, Facilitation Designer
Winnipeg, Canada
Jes Coverini is a Canadian brand strategist, graphic designer and community educator. Her design specialty is in creating striking, connective brand identities and resource materials that help to increase accessibility through thoughtfulness and inclusivity. Whether designing community programs or brand identities, Jes' design philosophy is deeply rooted in the importance of connection as part of the human experience. When we focus design on creating pathways for connection, we make room for big, meaningful and lasting impact.
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In community work, Jes has held roles from frontline to directorship in many Canadian non-profit organizations, including Youth Agencies Alliance, Art City Inc., Spence Neighbourhood Association, and Momenta. Her 15 years of working in collaboration with members of underserved communities, as well as with governments and funding bodies, has instilled in her a deep empathy and an intricate understanding of systems of power.
KJ Conyers-Steede
Halifax, Canada
For over eight years, KJ has led or worked with community projects that build quality public policy programming and lobbying initiatives that focus on addressing the "big hairy" policy issues within society. He is a strong believer in taking a systemic approach to designing solutions. He uses these approaches to undertake governance reviews and develop strategies that embrace a systemic approach, adopting a strategic foresight lens to the problem. To achieve this, he uses a facilitation style that can encourage collaboration through developing critical psychological safety that is integral to identifying the barriers surrounding community-centric policy and program development.
Associate
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Matt Dirks
Winnipeg, Canada
Founder of Alignex Operations Consulting, specializes in organizational architecture and strategic operations design, embracing disruptive innovation and cutting-edge SaaS solutions. With a diverse background in the service and guest experience sectors and leveraging his expertise in process design and implementation, Matt is committed to enabling open collaboration, individuality, and sustainable change within organizations.
Strategic Workflow Architect
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Matt is dedicated to helping leaders create sustainable change within their organizations by focusing on the humanity of their teams and customers. With over 15 years of experience across various hospitality and service industries, he has observed the challenges of aligning organizational goals at different levels. Matt's guiding principle is to solve interesting problems with interesting people and harness the power of disruptive innovation. Through Alignex, he works with small to mid-sized companies to design collaborative, individuality-driven workplaces that grow the right way over time, while embracing and fostering innovative practices. His expertise includes Strategic Operations Design, Process Automation, SAAS Implementation, Training Development, Organizational Architecture, and cultivating insight to identity continuum.
Karin Rits
Talinn, Estonia
Karin is a digital governance expert, who has worn different hats. During the 10+ years she worked for the Estonian digital transformation policy unit, she was actively involved in the drafting and implementation of several national IT strategies. Having made a brief stint in the private sector (IT), she worked as a product owner and helped to re-build a social welfare information system. She now works as a consultant assessing and guiding other countries in their digital transformation journeys.
Associate
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Having led the drafting of several national digital agendas during my job in Estonia's digital transformation strategy office, I have gained ample experience both with the pain and gain of digital governance in a truly digitally transformed country. A short period that I worked for an IT company served as an intensive course in customer-centric and agile software development, giving me faith that the same approach can be applied in the public sector. My next job as a product owner in a social welfare agency granted me the opportunity to experiment with that and implement a data-driven, customer-centric and agile development in the public sector. With 15 years of strategic and hands-on experience combined, I have recently been advising some other countries on their digitalization agendas.
Mathieu Arsenault
Charlottetown, Canada
Mathieu is a CX Consultant and facilitator from PEI, Canada. His expertise is creating delightful citizen experiences through human-centred design and technological solutions. With over 10 years of experience in CX, Product Management, and Service Design, Mathieu has worked in both private and public sectors.
Customer Experience Consultant
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From 2016 to 2019, Mathieu served as Head of Product and Customer Experience at a logistics software company. During his tenure, he championed the customers' needs and worked empathetically to prototype, iterate, and create technology that best met their requirements. Mathieu also played a key role in designing user research, creating user personas, wireframing, and prototyping. The result was a 16x productivity improvement in workflow and a 40% reduction in gas fees.
Mathieu has collaborated with provincial and federal government entities in the public sector in Canada on various projects. Notably, he co-created and facilitated a week-long social innovation lab across Atlantic Canada, served as lead facilitator and service designer for a province-wide youth retention project for the Government of Prince Edward Island, and was the lead consultant for an immigration citizen experience/digitization project for the Immigration Department of Prince Edward Island.
Mathieu has also worked internationally, most recently as a CX maturity assessor for the Abu Dhabi Program for Effortless Customer Experience. The program, which is a new model, enables effortless customer experiences across all Abu Dhabi Government entities.
In his personal life, Mathieu is thrilled to be expecting his first child with his partner. His passions include hiking, camping, winter sports, and playing RPG video games.
Yuki Wu
Experience Design Strategist & Facilitator
Niagara Falls, Canada
Over the past 8 years, Yuki has honed her skills in strategic operations management. Leveraging principles of systems thinking, service design, and quality improvement, she has enabled organizations in the government, healthcare, and non-profit sectors to navigate complexity and implement effective, user-centred change. She especially enjoys supporting and facilitating teams in connecting the dots and making even the most complex systems understandable and manageable.
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Yuki's journey began in the healthcare sector as a patient navigator, where she was deeply impacted by her experiences supporting spinal cord patients transitioning from surgery to rehab and then to their homes. This was her first exposure to the many system-level challenges patients could face in their journey. She was inspired to pursue an MBA from McMaster University to be better equipped to make a difference.After her MBA, as a process improvement consultant at the London Health Sciences Centre, Yuki contributed to a variety of projects, each designed to enhance the patient care journey and improve operational efficiency. These ranged from reducing blood tube labeling errors to pioneering integrated care models. During this time, she was also part of a team that implemented the Lean Management System, which deepened her understanding of how management systems are interconnected.
In 2020, Yuki took her skills to the New Brunswick provincial government. Here, she found herself in a multidimensional role that involved process improvement, strategic consulting, project management, and innovation. She contributed to complex projects such as the New Brunswick Rental Housing landscape review, capacity analysis for nursing home resources, and model office redesign. Yuki also led an organization-wide continuous improvement community. This unique opportunity allowed her to delve into areas like coaching, psychological safety, art of hosting, and organizational development, shaping her approach towards leadership and team collaboration.Yuki is currently working with Hamilton Public Health in strategic planning. This move has allowed her to gain insight into the workings of municipal government, their unique position to support the local community and its related challenges.
Her passion for driving system-level change, especially for vulnerable populations, continues to fuel her work. With a diverse array of experiences under her belt, she's eager to keep contributing to creating effective, user-centred strategies that make a meaningful impact.
Outside of work, Yuki is an avid traveler with an affinity for immersing herself in the rich tapestry of cultures, sights, and experiences our world offers. From watching fireworks by the Kamo River in Kyoto to volunteering for turtle conservation in a remote Costa Rican village, her travels fuel her passion for immersive experiences and making a difference. Currently, she's learning Portuguese in preparation for her next adventure to Portugal. She's driven by a life mission to set foot on all seven continents - 3 down 4 to go. This spirit of exploration is instrumental in shaping her understanding of people, systems, and the interconnected world we live in.
Strategic Operations and Change Facilitator
Nuha Alami
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Nuha is an Experience Designer with 10+ years of experience, passionate about crafting digital experiences that are both delightful and effective. She also designs and facilitates LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY method workshops.
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Nuha helps to create beautiful and meaningful designs for digital products. She adopts a UCD approach to keep customers at the center of the design process. She works closely with stakeholder to ensure that the final designs of a product or service meets user needs and supports and aligns with the business objectives and strategy.
With deep listening and co-creation at the core, Rachel supports clients with strategic processes to have challenging conversations and propel visions forward. Rachel is used to working across sectors and across communities in highly collaborative environments.
Associate
Rachel Derrah
Halifax, Canada
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Rachel Derrah (she/they) is a social innovator, facilitator and graphic recorder. Rachel’s work grows groups’ collaborative capacities in order to approach complex systemic issues.
They have worked in multi-sectoral social innovation labs to find clarity and action around economic growth, employment and early childhood education. Rachel recently facilitated a collaboration between Halifax Public Libraries and Halifax's Climate Change Department to engage people who are not usually in climate change conversations.
Rachel has facilitated participatory leadership trainings for public, corporate and non-profit sectors on four continents. They are the instructor for Simon Fraser University Executive Leadership program on Catalyzing Change in Complex Systems.
Her formal education is in Community Design at Dalhousie University. Rachel’s studies and practice continued in the Art of Participatory Leadership, Design Thinking and Anti-Oppression frameworks. She was a co-founder of Brave Space Social Innovation, where she learned and developed internationally recognized graphic recording expertise.
Rachel is a settler, born and raised on Wolastoqiyik territory. She is of British, Irish and Scottish descent. Currently they live in Kjipuktuk, unsurrendered Mi’kmaq territory.
Dr. Chris Burnett
Researcher & Digital Content Creator
Toronto, Canada
Originally from Scotland, Chris has spent the last few years living in Melbourne, Australia, where he completed his PhD. A sociologist by trade, Chris holds a Bachelors degree in Applied Social Sciences, a Masters in Social Enterprise and his Doctorate in the study of intermediation. Chris has called a few places home over the years, including Malta, Thailand and now Canada. Outside of work Chris' interests include board games, reading fantasy fiction, running and travelling.
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COMING SOON
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