Presenter
Lisa Lachance, MPA, PhD (Candidate)
President, Wisdom2Action Ltd
Lisa Lachance is president of Wisdom2Action Ltd. She is passionate about the power of knowledge mobilization and youth engagement to improve the health of children and youth. She also has extensive experience working in the public and nonprofit sectors in Canada. Ms. Lachance uses her strong cultural competence and collaborative leadership skills to connect people in meaningful ways so they can solve problems and move forward in their work. Ms. Lachance also loves to create positive change within organizations, both her own and others. At the W2A network, she led the creation of W2A's community engagement series, also called Wisdom2Action. These participatory, youth-led and youth-engaged Art of Hosting events have been held in communities across the country and internationally. Ms. Lachance is currently a doctoral candidate in health at Dalhousie University, focusing on the potential of collaboration between mental health services and the youth-serving nonprofit sector to improve youth mental health. She holds degrees in public administration and international development studies.
Ms. Lachance started her career in the public sector, working first with the federal government in Ottawa, primarily at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) where she led the implementation of Canada's Action Plan on Child Protection, which had a particular focus on child participation. She was the inaugural director of policy at the Nova Scotia Department of Finance, where she led initiatives to inspire innovation in the provincial government.
Ms. Lachance has consulted for Canadian, international, and United Nations’ organizations on knowledge translation/mobilization, children's rights, youth and community engagement, and gender equality. Her areas of expertise include policy development and practical policy implementation strategies, facilitation, performance measurement and evaluation, and knowledge translation, particularly engaging knowledge producers and users in innovative processes.