Robin Prest is the Senior Director of Democratic Participation and Innovation at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, where he builds the capacity of governments to co-create solutions and develops participatory methods to address declining trust in public institutions. His commentary and programming have been featured in forums such as the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26), the Open Government Partnership Global Summit, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s Regional Conference (Canada), The Hill Times and The Globe and Mail. Robin regularly leads complex public engagement projects, including conceiving and co-founding the Mitigating Wildfire initiative, serving as Chair of the Burnaby Community Assembly, and acting as Project Director for the Citizen Dialogues on Canada’s Energy Future, which the OECD included as a case study in its landmark 2020 report, Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave. Current roles include co-chairing Canada’s Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Open Government and advising the development of a maturity model that supports governments in evaluating and improving their organizational capacity for public participation.
