Jerry Berry, B.Sc. MPA, is the City Manager for the City of Nanaimo, a regional service centre for some 130,000 people on Vancouver Island. Jerry has 26 years experience in local government and has a special interest in local government education and leadership. He holds both Advanced and Senior Certification in local government administration management in the Province of BC and currently is a faculty member in Capilano College's Local Government Administration program. George Cuff George Cuff is a student, teacher and advisor on the art and principles of governance and the elements of effective organizations. He has worked in these areas since 1974, first with local administration and subsequently within the provincial bureaucracy. He has since applied his academic and experiential observations to his role as advisor to numerous small and large public sector organizations across Canada. George is an Albertan having been raised and educated in Edmonton. With the exception of a two year stint with the Royal Bank in Cranbrook, BC, George has resided in the Edmonton area with the past 28 years being spent in Spruce Grove, a residential suburb of the City of Edmonton. His background includes a Bachelor of Arts (with distinction) degree from the University of Alberta and work experience in banking, oil and gas, recreation administration, environmental protection, local government and the private sector. His consulting career dates back to 1979 when he began with a large Canadian firm (Woods Gordon/Clarkson Gordon), a then national now international firm (Ernst & Young) based in their Edmonton office. He subsequently set up his own firm of George B. Cuff & Associates Ltd. in 1984. His firm consists of a wide variety of seasoned professionals who offer their services through George on a per diem basis. As a result of this approach, George is able to assemble the best minds in a particular field on short notice for significant engagements. His firm provides a variety of consulting services to mostly public sector clients principally in the areas of board and council governance, organization reviews, trouble-shooting, executive recruitment, staff and elected official training and special projects. His consulting assignments take him to all parts of Canada on a regular basis. He has also taught local government for the Mayors of south-east China and for the Mayors and senior staff of five countries of S.E. Asia at a week long seminar in Jakarta. George served four terms as Mayor of Spruce Grove (population 14,000), having been first elected in 1977. In addition to having chaired numerous boards and committees, George is also a Past President of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (1982-83) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (1988-89). He has subsequently received the Award of Excellence from both of those organizations. George has a reputation for speaking and writing plainly and for taking on very difficult issues and reviews. His advice is candid and aimed at getting results. This "no-nonsense" approach has been valued by his clients as is the independence of his practice. George is married to Arliss and is happy to note that they are graduates to the elevated and esteemed rank of grandparents. Both Arliss and George are involved in the ministries of their local Baptist church and have recently completed 7 years of service on the board of Angels' Valley Christian Retreat Centre located in the Fort Assinboine area of Alberta. They have also been involved in overseas work through their role as charter members and directors of the "Friends of Romania", a charitable organization which sees as its focus helping the disadvantaged children and communities of northwest Romania. George was appointed this year to serve on the Board of Trustees of Taylor University College in Edmonton. George's website address is www.georgecuff.com Don Cummings is the Managing Partner with his current firm and specializes in providing clients with strategic management and organizational transformation services. With this background, Don has had extensive experience in stakeholder analysis, organizational change management, strategic management, and financial management issues. He has conducted strategic assessments of programs and organizational processes, as well as developed customized transformational processes for a number of organizations. In addition to strategic and operational planning, Don has direct experience in facilitating quality management initiatives and, in particular, business process innovation and technology integration efforts. He has also conducted numerous training workshops in organizational change, program management, performance measurement and improvement practices. Don is known nationally for facilitation of Executive Committees, Boards and Councils involving complex organizational design and strategy issues. Joseph Garcea is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan where he teaches courses in local governance, public policy analysis, public management, and intergovernmental relations. He is co-editor of two books: one is titled Municipal Reform in Canada, which examines the nature of municipal reforms in all provinces and territories during the past fifteen years; and the other is titled Indian Urban Reserves in Saskatchewan, which examines municipal-Aboriginal relations in the creation and operation of urban reserves. Professor Garcea has served as Chair and Director of Research and Analysis for the Saskatchewan Task Force on Municipal Legislative Renewal, and as a member of the Metis Electoral Consultations Panel in Saskatchewan. Allison Habkirk, BA, MA (Planning), MPA, MCIP has spent over twenty years actively involved in local government as an elected official, professional and educator. She has served as a councilor and is currently Mayor of the District of Central Saanich, a rural community of approximately 15,000 people located outside of Victoria, B.C. She is also a Registered Planner who has worked as a consultant and trainer to local governments and the Province of B.C and is the author of a number of publications on local government planning. She maintains a keen interest in small town and rural planning issues and education. Ms. Habkirk is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria where she teaches land use planning and local government history. Rhonda Hilyer, president and founder of Agreement Dynamics, is an international consultant with a reputation for helping convert traditional, conflict-based environments into productive, collaborative ones. Her training programs on understanding and converting conflict, on negotiation and agreement, on effective communication approaches, and on the essential elements needed to implement successful change processes are very powerful and give new insights into solving difficult problems. Her client list is extensive and diverse, with a wide variety of local, state, national, and international public and private sector groups. Rhonda is one of the few negotiation trainers/consultants who is regularly retained by both management and labour. With a background in both labour and management, she brings a unique perspective to her clients, as well as the achievement of many successfully concluded negotiations, mediations, and joint labour-management efforts. Rhonda has developed RESOLVE, a proven method for making collaborative processes actually work in employment, labour and human resources disputes. Unlike other collaborative or interest-based approaches, RESOVLE provides tools for reaching agreements and building good relations. This approach has been successfully implemented in reaching natural resource agreements, in complex and multi-party negotiations, and in a myriad of group decision-making settings. Success Signals, her book on communication is a best seller and the training program of the same name has been aired on public television. Prior to founding Agreement Dynamics, Rhonda served 20 years as a local, national, and international labour leader, negotiator, and trainer. She rose quickly through the ranks by earning the respect of union members and employers alike. In 1986, following the sharp decline and near collapse of a Seattle labour organization, Rhonda restored morale and coached the 6,000-member union through a sweeping cultural change. Her strong focus on vision building, goal setting, values clarification/commitment, and strategic planning resulted in increased membership and economic solvency. A civic-minded citizen, Rhonda has served on numerous boards including the Washington State Convention and Trade Center Board, the Goodwill Games Board of Directors, the Seattle-King County Economic Development Council, the Governor's Tourism Development Council, and as a Trustee to the Seattle Community College Board. Fred Jacques has had a diverse business career spanning over twenty-five years in the health care, manufacturing, energy and government sectors. For the past ten years, he has focused his consulting practice in the areas of leadership development and coaching, organizational change and development and human resources. Fred has enjoyed success as both an external and an internal consultant to organizations of all sizes in both the public and the private sectors, and has extensive experience within both the corporate and field environments. Fred holds teaching positions in the School of Business, Executive Education at the University of Alberta, as well as at the Executive Development department at the Universities of Calgary and Lethbridge, and at the Banff Centre. Fred has a Masters degree in Applied Behavioural Sciences from the Leadership Institute of Seattle/City University and a Ph.D. in Organizational Behaviour from the University of Calgary. He is a Certified Human Resources Professional, accredited in the use of the Myers-Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) and in assessment of Emotional Intelligence. David Landis is a Nebraska state senator, an award-winning teacher and a skilled negotiator in the public arena. He currently chairs the Revenue Committee for the Nebraska Unicameral. Many of the 250 bills he has passed in 26 years in the Unicameral have been consensus measures forged by negotiation that brought contesting parties to agreement. Senator Landis has brokered legislative agreements between labour and management, utilities and ratepayers, big banks and small banks, insurance companies and trial attorneys, and other seemingly intractable foes. Senator Landis has passed legislation to create a statewide network of mediation centres, establish a system for negotiated administrative rulemaking in state government, extend the use of arbitration to resolve disputes, and create the state labour-management collective bargaining system. His skill has been developed at training seminars at Harvard, MIT, and the University of Illinois. Currently he teaches lawyers and graduate public administrators to negotiate at the University of Nebraska College of Law and the Department of Public Administration. Senator Landis has three times been the Best Teacher award winner at Doane College. His workshop clients include: Internal Revenue Service, Pacific Public Policy Program, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, State Farm Insurance Co., Western Fire Chiefs Association, Rocky Mountain Public Policy Program, California League of Cities, and the Southwest Leadership Program. Senator Landis is married to Melodee Ann McPherson, has two children, Matthew and Melissa, and enjoys music, theater, and doing a radio show on the weekends. He graduated from the University of Nebraska with a B.A. (1970), Juris Doctor (1971) a Masters of Public Administration (1984) and a Masters in Regional and Community Planning (1995). Dr. Edward LeSage is Professor and Director, Government Studies, Faculty of Extension. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Carleton University. Dr. LeSage has served as director or co-director of the Faculty's public administration and governance programs since March, 1975. He served as Associate Dean (Academic) for six years under Dean's Gerry Glassford and Randy Garrison. His areas of academic specialization are governance, local government and public administration. His recent publications include co-editor and contributor to Municipal Reform in Canada (Oxford University Press, 2005), co-authorship of "Shared Service Arrangements: Determinants of Success" (Western Centre for Economic Research, 2004). Dr. LeSage is course director for the online NACLAA course "Public Administration Professionalism", and the "Government Context" short course. He has served as a consultant and advisory to governments, local government professional associations, and programs and institutes of local government. He is leading the Faculty's efforts to establish a Regional and Urban Studies Centre. Dr. Ian Montgomerie brings 15 years of experience in policy development and strategic planning with the Government of Alberta. During a varied and challenging career in public service, Ian acquired a breadth of experience that provides a comprehensive understanding of policy making processes throughout government, extending from policy research to the decision-making systems of Cabinet. In 1994, Ian completed a Ph.D. in Educational Administration at the University of Alberta. His research concentrated on the management of the public policy process, with a dissertation addressing the role of public consultation in the formulation of public policy. He is the immediate Past-President of the Wild Rose (Alberta) Chapter of the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) and was the Program Chair and Budget Director for the IAP2 International Conference held in Banff in November 1999. Ian instructs courses on Strategic Management and Public Consultation for the University of Alberta, Senior Executive Managers' Development Program. He is also on the faculty of Athabasca University, Centre for Innovative Management, Masters of Business Administration (MBA) offering courses in Public Consultation, Public Sector Management, and International E-government. Ian offers demonstrated abilities in strategic management, policy development, research design, group facilitation, and public involvement, as well as highly developed conceptual and communication skills. He brings a proactive, collaborative, and client-centred approach, with an orientation toward quality results. Dr. Montgomerie has demonstrated experience in the areas of:
Barry Scholnick is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business at the University of Alberta. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Cambridge. His research interests include International Business, Interest Rates, and Banking. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. in their Central Banking Department. Barry has also provided economic commentary to a large variety of Canadian news organizations such as The Globe and Mail, CBC Newsworld and the National Post. Barry regularly conducts Executive Development seminars for the Banff School of Advanced Management, the Management Development Program at the University of Alberta and the Alberta Executive MBA Program. He has twice been awarded the Donald and Margaret MacKenzie distinguished teaching award from the Faculty of Business, University of Alberta. Dr. Brad Stelfox completed his B.Sc. in Zoology at the University of Alberta in 1980 and his Ph.D. in Wildlife Productivity at the University of Alberta in 1985. From 1981 to 1987, Brad conducted research on alternative land use practices in Kenya, East Africa. From 1988-1991, Dr. Stelfox worked as the Research Director of the Teton Science School in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In 1991, he accepted a research position at the Alberta Environmental Centre where he led a research project examining the effects of forestry on biodiversity of boreal mixed wood communities. In 1995, Dr. Stelfox established FOREM Technologies, an organization which focuses on the interface between human land use and regional landscapes. Most recently, Brad has assisted the provincial government, industry and various not-for-profit organizations to quantify cumulative land use effects that are related to overlapping land use processes such as agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, human populations, and transportation. Dr. Kirby Wright is Director of Knowledge Management and Research for Acton Consulting. Acton Consulting is an Edmonton-based management consulting firm specializing in providing customized consulting services to private and public-sector clients and research services leading to the development of evidence-based practices in key sectoral areas including knowledge management, innovation and process design. His recent consulting engagements have including developing knowledge management strategies, integrating knowledge processes into knowledge work activities, designing communities of practice and knowledge networks and initiating processes to identify and provide access to sources of expertise in organizations. Additionally, he has initiated a number of applied research studies focusing on expanding innovative potential within organizations. Kirby's recent research activities have focused on the implications of knowledge management for individual knowledge workers and professional experts. His work on Personal Knowledge Management emphasizes the need to understand knowledge management from the context of professional problem solving and decision making practices. Previously, Kirby has been affiliated with a number of post-secondary educational institutions, including serving on faculty at the University of Alberta and as an adjunct faculty member with the Center for Innovative Management at Athabasca University. His work involved teaching, program design, research and program management in several Masters programs and non-credit professional education. Specifically, he has extensive experience and expertise in the design and teaching of on-line professional education programs. He has designed and instructed a number of collaboration-based, experiential on-line Knowledge Management courses that are recognized for their effectiveness and impact. His doctoral work investigated the relationship between knowledge management, innovation and learning through work processes among expert workers in project-based technology firms. As well, he holds an M.B.A., B.A. (Honours) and B.Ed.
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