On Oct. 6, 2021, the Union hosted Dr. Alison Shaw, the Executive Director of Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Action on Climate Team (ACT) to lead a virtual session as part of its Breaking Bread discussion series. Breaking Bread is a project from the TRU Students’ Union that connects students with community leaders through small group discussions around shared topics of interest. 

Dr. Shaw has over two decades of experience leading cross-cutting climate change and sustainability science and policy research, and in mobilizing knowledge, developing tools, and creating partnerships. She has worked as a scholar, a science-policy strategist, and a sustainability consultant and organizational coach. As Founder of FlipSide Sustainability, a consulting and coaching company, Dr. Shaw applied her research background to co-create with clients’ leading-edge practices at international, national, regional, and local scales. Her efforts have focused on transformative change, encouraging policy-makers and decision-makers to understand climate change and sustainability as a profound and urgent socio-economic design challenge that requires engagement from all sectors and scales of governance. 

Questions considered by the group included: 

• How can community planning and building design be part of climate mitigation?  
• Are there things that municipalities can be doing to adapt to increasingly extreme weather such as the heat wave in June 2021?  
• What can individuals do to make a positive difference where they live?  
• As well as other topics 

Join an upcoming discussion this fall on a wide variety of topics including Indigenization, Mental Health, Vaccination, and other areas. Learn more and signup here.