Board of Directors

John Kolk is married to Laura and operates an irrigation and dry land farm in southern Alberta. They are blessed with four children and four grandchildren, and live near Picture Butte, Alberta. Together they built and are living in an energyPlus home (straw bale, adobe flooring, rainwater collection, grey water recycling, solar water heating, wind and solar electric production, habitat project with Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District, Pheasants Forever, and Ducks Unlimited).

John has served on many boards including the Alberta Water Council (AWC) and the Alberta Economic Development Authority (AEDA). He is Founding Chair of the Alberta Environmental Farm Plan Company (AEFP) and County Councillor for the County of Lethbridge. He currently serves on the Agricultural Products Marketing Council.

Tom Davis is the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Resource Stewardship Division within the Ministry of Alberta Environment & Parks. Tom joined the Ministry in 2006 after serving with the Canadian Forces for 24 years in a variety of capacities. His time with the Canadian Forces shaped his perspectives on leadership allowing him to practice, observe, teach and assess leadership in action.

During his time with the Government of Alberta, Tom has served as the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Olympic Bid Secretariat and the Executive Director of teams including the Systems Management Branch, the Cumulative Effects Management System Transformation Team and the Alberta Environment and Parks Support and Emergency Response Team (ASERT).

Tom holds a Bachelor of Applied Science degree (Digital Signal Processing and Material Science) from the Royal Military College of Canada.

Dave has over 25 years experience in the Upstream Oil and Gas Industry having worked for a major oil company, as a private consultant, and as a regulator with the National Energy Board before joining the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers sixteen years ago.

His key areas of responsibilities have included: environment, health and safety, managing and working to improve industry-stakeholder relations, land liability management, and various operations regulatory issues.

Dr. Eleni Stroulia is a Professor in the Department of Computing Science, at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on addressing industry-driven problems and interdisciplinary challenges, using AI and machine-learning methods. From 2011-2016, she held the NSERC/AITF Industrial Research Chair on Service Systems Management with IBM, and she has played leadership roles in multiple national and international projects. She has supervised more than 60 graduate students and PDFs, who have gone forward to stellar academic and industrial careers. Her excellence in mentorship has been recognized with a McCalla professorship (2018) and a Killam Award for Excellence in Mentoring (2019). From 2020 to 2023, she led the University of Alberta's AI4Society Signature Area, and since 2021 she is serving as the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science.

Cindy Fox is the Executive Director, Financial Controller at Alberta Innovates. With 20 years of accounting and managerial experience she provides leadership and strategic direction for the financial operations of Alberta Innovates and its subsidiaries InnoTech Alberta and C-FER Technologies. This includes ensuring financial services are aligned with business priorities and delivered effectively as well as conforming to regulatory and legislative requirements.

Cindy acquired a Bachelor of Business Administration Accounting from NAIT in 2004 and graduated as a Certified General Accountant in 2006. In her spare time she enjoys the outdoors with her husband Jordan and their two children as well as spending time with family and friends.

Richard Briand was born and raised in northern Alberta. His family moved from the small town of Falher to Whitecourt in 1980. Richard lived in Whitecourt until he completed high school in 1987 and left to attend the University of Alberta.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in Forestry in 1991. After graduation, Richard began his forestry career working for Silvacom Ltd., a consulting firm based in Edmonton. After 9 ½ years, he moved to Slave Lake to take a position with West Fraser Mills. Richard advanced through a variety of roles with West Fraser in Slave Lake and Hinton. He has worked in planning, operational and management roles. The majority of his career has been in the field of strategic, long-term forestry planning. Richard is a Registered Professional Forester and is the Chief Forester for West Fraser’s Alberta operations.

Krista Phillips is the Manager of Land and Biodiversity at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP). Krista joined CAPP in 2007, originally focused air quality and climate change policy. Her current role as the lead for the industry association on land use policy and planning and biodiversity conservation offers her a unique perspective on the ABMI’s value to Alberta and Canada at large.

Krista came to CAPP – and Calgary – from Vancouver, where she was studying environment-energy policy and land use planning at Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. Her career started at Imperial in Toronto after having completed a degree in Industrial Engineering at University of Toronto.  

Living in Calgary, Krista fills her free time exploring the wilderness with her husband and two young children. She has also participated on local Calgary boards, focusing on building communities, increasing active transportation opportunities and infrastructure, and childcare programming.

Norm has been a board member of Alberta Cattle Commission, Western Stock Growers’ Association (president 1997-98), Canadian Property Rights Research Institute, Alberta Property Rights Initiative and currently sits on the steering committee of Grasslands Capital X. He is a member of the WSGA board of Governors and represents WSGA on the Alberta Endangered Species Conservation Committee.

He continues his involvement in a family-owned ranching operation located in NE British Columbia. In an associated ranching business, he designed and manufactured regenerative tools used in grazing management and continues to support regenerative Agriculture through Cows and Soil Inc.

Norm obtained a BSc in Agriculture with a double major in Animal Science and Grazing Management from the University Alberta.

Kecia is a prairie native with a background in ecological research, education, and applied conservation. She completed her B.Sc. in Biology at the University of British Colombia, M.Sc. in Geography at the University of Victoria, and her Ph.D. in Ecology at McGill University in the Neotropical Environment option, a partnership program between McGill and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. Her postdoctoral research was conducted at STRI, the Australian National University and the University of Alberta. She took on the role of Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), Northern Alberta, in June 2017. In this role she works with colleagues and collaborators to increase protections of our public lands as protected areas to benefit biodiversity, nature-based climate solutions and human communities.

Remi currently works as a Forest Resource Business Unit Leader with Alberta Pacific Forest Industries Limited near Boyle, Alberta. He has a Bachelor of Science in Forest Management from the University of Alberta and is a Registered Professional Forester (RPF) in Alberta as well as a Project Management Professional (PMP) designation from the Project Management Institute.

Remi has worked for over 33 years in forestry in Alberta and British Columbia in various fields including silviculture, harvesting, transportation, planning & fiber logistics. He also has experience in fiber acquisition and optimization using models in both the tactical and operational levels. Remi enjoys the outdoors as well as spending time with his family and lives on a farm near Plamondon, Alberta. His hobbies include farming, gardening, fishing, hunting and snowshoeing.

As Sr. Director of Conservation for Alberta, Shira is responsible for new land securements, and management of the existing land portfolio. She is interested in the intersection of nature, energy, sustainability, and organizational action, and has experience in multiple sectors - NGO, energy, industry associations, environmental and management consulting.