Ellen Pond

Ellen’s current teaching practice explores how to achieve societal change, centered on the intersections of the climate and biodiversity crises, decolonization and equity. With extensive experience in climate policy, community engagement, and knowledge mobilization, Ellen has been teaching at KPU since 2015. She recently led the Training team at the Canadian Centre for Climate Services (Environment and Climate Change Canada) to deliver learning tools and tailored climate information for a wide range of climate data users, from public health organizations to Indigenous communities. In 2020, she proposed and co-founded the Climate+ Challenge at KPU, to support empathetic and solutions-oriented teaching and learning on the climate crisis across the university. She is currently Co-Chair in the School of Horticulture, and former Chair of Policy Studies.

As a climate consultant, Ellen worked for 15 years with local governments and other clients such as BC Hydro to develop collaborative, cross-department, cross-organization, and community-based climate change solutions. She designed the Energy section in the award-winning Town of Creston Official Community Plan. As Senior Sustainable Communities Advisor and Program Director of Green Buildings and Urban Solutions at the Pembina Institute, Ellen led collaborative policy projects with governments and industry that laid the groundwork for BC’s Energy Step Code. Earlier research work in community-based climate planning with UBC’s Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning led to publications on climate change visualization and co-authorship on a book chapter in the award winning and groundbreaking publication Successful Adaptation to Climate Change: Linking Science and Practice in a Rapidly Changing World (S. Moser and M. Boykoff, eds). Ellen brings her passion for collaboratively designed solutions to her work with interdisciplinary teams and her teaching at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Ellen is a Landscape Architect (BCSLA) and Red Seal Carpenter with an undergraduate degree in Geography and a Master of Landscape Architecture. Her family settled in Treaty One, Treaty Four and Ktunaxa, Syilx and Sinixt territories over the past 100+ years. She currently lives and works in Vancouver as a guest on the unceded, ancestral and sacred territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.