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CONSULTING TEAM
Photo: Tom Lancaster (Re-Invention Sustainability Planning & Development), Laura MacKay Rhodes (Whistler Centre for Sustainability), and Pong Leung (The Natural Step Canada) at the Bean Counter
Mark Allison, Senior Planner and Manager of Advisory Services
Whistler Centre for Sustainability
Mark Allison brings 15 years of experience as a community and regional planner with local governments and is currently heading up the Whistler Centre for Sustainability Advisory Services. Prior to joining the Centre, Mark was a Senior Planner with the City of Surrey, where he was responsible for the City's award winning Sustainability Charter, the OCP update based on the charter, and planning for Surrey's City Centre. Before his work with Surrey, Mark was the Transportation Planner for the City of New Westminster, the Regional Growth Strategy Coordinator for the Fraser Valley Regional District, and a sustainability planning consultant, after finishing his masters degree in community and regional planning at UBC. His thesis work focused on the relationships between land use, housing and transportation for growth management in Metro Vancouver. Long an advocate of Smart Growth, Sustainable Development and Transit Oriented Development, Mark is an active board member with the Community Energy Association and served 6 years as a board member and Vice-President of Smart Growth BC.
Prior to his planning career, Mark completed a masters degree in Experimental Physics at the University of Waterloo, specializing in alternative energy research, and worked as a research scientist and senior systems engineer in Canada and abroad on the design of advanced control systems and a variety of energy projects, including solar cells, electrical power generation and plasma fusion experiments. When not planning for sustainable communities, Mark is in the outdoors, taking in arts and culture, or travelling to explore how things are done in other places around the world.
Contact: mallison@whistler.ca
Tom Lancaster, BA, MA Planning, Provisional Member of PIBC/CIP
Re-Invention Sustainability Planning and Development
Tom is an urban planner specializing in community sustainability and smart growth land use planning and development strategies. He will act as the lead planner and project manager for this OCP. Tom has been consulting in urban and community planning across the province for the past seven years. Prior to his career in urban planning, he specialized in ecosystem restoration and worked project-management in forestry for ten years.
Most recently, Tom was a lead for Smart Growth Advisory Services (now, Smart Growth BC (SGBC)) and Community Assistance Program (CAP) Coordinator for SGBC, where he developed strong partnerships with municipal staff and local governments across the province, while working on smart growth strategies that best suited the local context.
Before coming to SGBC, Tom founded an urban planning firm that specialized in innovative public participation techniques. Tom has worked as a community and environmental planner for several BC First Nations, where he wrote Home and Community Care plans, traditional use maps and was involved in a multi-year community visioning process that included a Comprehensive Community Plan (CCP) and Physical Development Plan (PDP), as well as writing zoning bylaws. Current projects include managing, facilitating, and writing the joint OCP for Cobble Hill and Shawnigan Lake in the Cowichan Valley Regional District, contributing to the Squamish Downtown Neighbourhood Plan, managing the City of Vernon OCP review, and conducting the public process and writing the OCPs for Kaslo and Silverton in a regionally-coordinated review of small town land use plans. Contact: lancaster.tom@gmail.com
Pong Leung, Senior Sustainability Advisor
The Natural Step Canada
As a Senior Advisor with The Natural Step Canada, Pong supports communities, businesses and other organizations with integrated sustainability planning and education and delivers hundreds of presentations and training workshops on The Natural Step Framework.
He has shared his expertise in with clients such as the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, where he lead the development of the AUMA's strategy for integrated community sustainability planning and was the lead author on a well received guidebook for municipalities (http://msp.auma.ca/). In addition to the AUMA, he has lead engagements with Halifax Regional Municipality, the Resort Municipality of Whistler, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, amongst others.
Most recently, Pong was Program Director of the Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability graduate program at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. The program is based in the concepts of The Natural Step Framework and develops leadership skills and product innovation. In addition to this role, Pong also led a successful year-long educational engagement for change agents in the European chemical industry. He has also worked on sustainability issues with AIESEC Canada, Alberta Environment and Shell Canada.
Pong completed his Masters of Science in Environmental Management and Policy at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics at Lund University in Sweden and his Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta. Contact: pleung@naturalstep.ca
