Lauren’s early career blended journalism, research and teaching focused on transitions to democracy, national reconciliation, reconstruction and nation-building, including extensive fieldwork in post-independence Namibia. Back in Canada, those preoccupations shaped policy and civic engagement roles across federal, provincial and municipal spheres. Canadian Councils – for international co-operation, national unity and learning – became an oddly recurring thread.
For the past fifteen years Lauren has brought the same lens to advancing sustainable finance for triple-bottom-line outcomes. At Vancity she built a cross-organization strategy for multi-sector community investment partnerships and system-level advocacy, and was part of the small team that relaunched Vancity Community Investment Bank as Canada’s first explicitly values-based Schedule 1 bank. She was founding executive director of the Table of Impact Investment Practitioners, has chaired the Canadian Credit Union Association’s Community Impact Committee and the board of Vancouver CityStudio, and served on the federal steering committee that recommended Canada’s pioneering Social Finance Fund and its investment readiness supports. She is currently executive advisor to Boann Social Impact.
Running through all of it is a conviction that extraordinary things get built by ambitious alliances drawn together in service of more robust democracies, more inclusive economies and a greener, bluer planet – and an enduring delight in the forging.
