Dr. Alison Shaw

Dr. Alison Shaw is a scientist and practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in pioneering climate change and sustainability research-to-practice approaches. She was the first authorized research observer in the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change process, and after this experience spent a decade in academia designing ways to integrate climate and sustainability strategy into policy and practice across diverse scales. Frustrated by the pace of change and setbacks of electoral cycles, she founded FlipSide Sustainability, and used her training and organizational coaching to catalyze the leadership, capacity, and innovation necessary to embed climate and sustainability action into diverse organizations. As Research Lead of ACT – Action on Climate Team, SFU, she co-created pioneering low carbon resilience research-to-practice approaches. Taking on the role of Executive Director of ACT in 2022, she continues to advance low carbon resilience approaches and nature-based solutions as systemic and effective ways to embed climate action across diverse sectors and scales. As inaugural Executive Director of SFU Climate Innovation, she is applying ‘pracademic’ approaches, leveraging the capacities of the university to advance community-centred climate action and innovation. She is leading the development of an SFU enabling platform that catalyzes interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation with and for community partners to advance research-for-impact. The goal is to mobilize knowledge and scale innovations that accelerates the transition toward low carbon, resilient and sustainable communities across Canada and beyond.