Dr. Jayne Engle is former President and CEO of Future Generations University. Her background spans practice, research, and teaching in a wide range of geographic and cultural contexts, including cities globally — primarily in US, Canada and across Europe; and sites of societal transition, including PhD fieldwork in Haiti after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, and a Peace Corps tour of duty in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. She’s held multiple leadership roles in community planning and economic transition, civic engagement and governance, philanthropic strategy, and innovation ecosystems, including with the J.W. McConnell Foundation and Dark Matter Labs. She co-founded Seven Generation Cities (7GenCities) with the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre, an initiative co-led with Indigenous community leaders, municipalities and other civil society partners aiming to transform civic and social infrastructure for the long term, centering principles of Truth and Reconciliation, and Indigenous ways of knowing, alongside multiple knowledge and wisdom systems.
Jayne holds a PhD from McGill University, where she is adjunct faculty. Two publications that reveal the transdisciplinary and collaborative nature of her work are Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities (2022; Open Access), and Stories of Tragedy, Trust and Transformation? A case study of education-centered community development in post-earthquake Haiti (2018).
