The Team
At Emerge Collab we build collaborative capacity for systemic evolution in everything we do. It’s our special sauce.
Kate Sutherland
Co-Founder and People Artist
Kate is a social entrepreneur and organizational development consultant with a passion for bridging mindsets, stakeholders, silos, and sectors to support innovation and greater positive impact. Digging deeper, Kate is on a lifelong quest for ways to quicken peace and joy. This has included deep dives into alternative education, economics, community, and inner work, along with a geeky fascination for group dynamics — groups being a doorway to win-win-win breakthroughs in perception, thinking, and action. For over 35 years she has worked with think tanks, non-profits, private-sector organizations and governments at all levels, and on issues as diverse as energy policy, urban transportation, food security, social inclusion, community currencies, early childhood development, and livable cities. She is increasingly focused on helping leaders and change agents create non-linear change through inner work (i.e. intention, perception, intuition and consciousness), tapping the latent capacity of groups for collective intelligence, co-creation and flow. Kate is also co-founding faculty and executive coach for Simon Fraser University’s Social Innovation Certificate, SFU’s Certificate in Evaluation for Social Impact and Transformational Learning, and THNK School of Creative Leadership. Her third book, We Can Do This! makes accessible frameworks used by professional facilitators and consultants.
Kate’s Quote of the month: “Ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong.” -Margaret Wheatley
Christine Spinder
Co-Founder and Focalizer
Christine is a facilitator, coach and educator with 25+ years of leadership in social innovation, community economic development, Indigenous-Ally collaboration, liberatory and anti-oppression practice, education, engagement and transformative systems initiatives across Canada, including The Restoring Circles Project, a social innovation based in reconciliation action research. She’s been awarded multiple times for her social innovation projects, including a Canadian Gemini and being named an Ashoka Changemakers Social Innovator. Christine has facilitated systems-evolving collaborations engaging diversity, land, art, language, Indigenous sovereignty, social enterprise, inclusive circle process and relationship-based development with national, international, circumpolar, inter-governmental, public-private and co-operative initiatives. With her Masters in transformational leadership from Saybrook University, and lifelong studies in justice, diversity, embodiment, story, ritual and art, Christine engages collaborators in bridging personal transformation in consciousness and relational power, to organizational and systemic evolution with creativity and embodied agency for rippling change impacts.
Christine’s quote of the month: “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” Toni Cade Bambara.
Bradley Shende
Co-Founder and Random Idea Generator
A natural nerd-to-english translator, Bradley demystifies complex ideas to improve systems. As a Creative Technologist Bradley spent his early years surfing in tech, pioneering online video streaming technologies, mobile-based content platforms and learning content management systems. He has also produced award winning films and groundbreaking apps, always with one foot on the story and the other on the system. His digital expertise has been called upon by international media and Fortune 500 companies. Pivoting from technology towards human systems and social enterprise several years ago he began working on environmental, housing, and poverty reduction strategies and research. Most recently he Co-Founded INDIGENEXT, who in partnership with Capilano University launched Western Canada’s first Indigenous Digital Accelerator (IDA), as well as “Drone Territory” an Indigenous drone piloting and land guardianship initiative and several other “Reconciliation Through Innovation” projects. He serves as an advisor to several Startups, is Founding Faculty of BCIT’s Digital Design and Development Program, and helped plant the BIL Conference (an alternative to TED) in Vancouver. When not hatching a plan, Bradley can be found skiing with his twins on the North Shore Mountains.
Bradley’s Quote of the month:
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin
Priti Shah
Inclusion Activator
As a feminist educator, transformative facilitator, social justice activist and presenter, Priti Shah brings 30 years of insights and experiences to her work for equity and justice. Her activism and political advocacy have been shaped by her
upbringing in India and her experiences as a racialized settler in Canada. Using a collaborative intersectional approach and building capacity, much of her work is focused on challenging systemic racism, sexism and approaches that negate
immigrant, refugee, and non-status women’s potential and experiences. Over the last 30 years, she has been working with non-profit organizations, public sector unions, governments, interfaith organizations, and grass roots collectives. She has
created over 500 workshops/programs/focus groups to challenge gender and racial inequality. Currently she is President of CRIAW (Canadian Research Institute for Advancement of Women). She is actively involved in municipal
committees, local and national committees/boards, and the labour movement (she is currently working at Hospital Employees’ Union as Equity and Human Rights Officer) and was recently recognized with the Inspirational Wonder Women award, the TOP 25 Canadian Immigrant award and the Drishti Award for Excellence in Community Engagement. She has also founded numerous community organizations and initiatives including URJA International and Miracle
Connection local refugee centre.
Loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu
Jeff Vander Clute
The Merlin
Jeff Vander Clute is a veteran technology entrepreneur, consciousness coach, and organizational transformation consultant committed to harmonizing human systems with Earth’s ecosystems. Jeff has grown companies in the online, medical imaging, social enterprise, and consciousness domains, and he has advised numerous other businesses and charitable organizations. Along the way, he has developed unique methods for leadership transformation and inspired decision-making that enable teams to operate with greater wisdom and achieve world changing results. Jeff delights in helping complex living systems – especially organizations that are contributing strongly to social and environmental well-being – to evolve and thrive during these times of disruption and new possibilities. He is able to see the gifts that are seeking to be born and facilitate the emergence of people’s awakened selves in alignment with the trends of shifting consciousness on the planet. He creates and leads retreats, workshops, and other transformational experiences for people who are ready to dive into their radical potential as change agents. Jeff is a longtime member of the Evolutionary Leaders Circle, past chair of the Source of Synergy Foundation, and a co-founder of The Consciousness of Money, Enlightening Journeys and Expeditions, and Sourcing The Way.
COLLABORATORS
True to it’s name, Emerge Collab engages in collaborative projects with leaders in their field bringing expertise, insight and energy to redefine systems change.
Shayna Rector Bleeker
Collaborating Associate - The Bridge Project
Shayna thrives at the intersection of communication, strategy, systems and design. She has a proven track record of helping senior leaders to build vision and create impact, while successfully navigating organizational complexity and change. Having lived in The Netherlands, UK, Switzerland, Australia and Canada, provides her a unique, high impact and empathetic approach to leadership, communication and community in the face of global complexity. After a decade as an Intrapreneur working FROM Royal Dutch Shell in partnerships with media, government and not-for-profit entities she became an independent consultant focused on network weaving, capacity building and ecosystem development work across networks including Social Innovation Canada, The League of Intrapreneurs and THNK School of Creative Leadership. Now she is mobilizing investment in low carbon transitions as Co-Founder and Partnerships Manager for 7 Generation Capital Corp.
Lieven Callewaert
Collaborating Associate - The Bridge Project
Integrating research, action and systems transformation in leadership and collaborative capacity, Lieven has launched many globally innovative approaches to collaborative leadership and pioneered regenerative models of value creation: founding energy cooperatives in Belgium and Flanders, helping to start the Flanders Circular Economy framework, bringing together regional collaborators with cities and businesses in the Netherlands, and developing new governance and preparing for circular frameworks such as the European Green New Deal. After being active in Europe for the last 25 years, Lieven moved to Canada in 2018 with his family in order to both live and learn in more depth how nature and the earth can teach us. He is an active board member and founder of The Green Alliance in the Netherlands, YesAndMore Europe and Anchor Innovation in Canada, guiding the start-up of UN Innovation centres on the West Coast and in the Netherlands. Through his personal credo of “a healthy me for a healthy planet”, he challenges and supports leaders, organizations and collectives to strengthen their “collaborative capacity” in order to build this bridge between people and planet in the best way possible.
Lieven’s quote of the Month:
“Life is what happens to you while making other plans” – John Lennon