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Kya is a community-minded spirit, passionate about timely change, collaboration and meaningful conversations. Kya grew up on Salt Spring Island before moving to some of Canada’s most beautiful mountain towns where she worked in different industries, experienced other communities, and ultimately found her way back to her hometown with new skills and perspectives. She currently works as the Wedding & Events Coordinator for Harbour House Hotel.

From carpenter to tour guide and now event manager, Kya believes that every experience has similar lessons to teach about communication skills, group dynamics and shared humanity. After completing the Event Management Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, she established her event planning business, Kinnect Events. Kya enjoys volunteering and is proud to be a CEDC Commissioner, as well as being active with Transition Salt Spring, and the Salt Spring Community Alliance. Her hobbies include hiking, circus-style multi hula hooping and permaculture gardening.

Bryan has 25 years’ experience in energy conservation program design and renewable energy development.  He founded and managed an incubator fund providing $12 million annually to support the develop of innovate electricity conservation programs at Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator.  Currently, he is the Chair of Transition Salt Spring — a catalyst for the implementation of the Salt Spring Island Climate Action Plan for which he was a lead author.  He’s passionate to see how much food he can grow on 1.89 acres on the south end where he lives with his partner, poet Brian Day.

Bryan is passionate about bridging divides, finding synergies, and building a more equitable and diverse Salt Spring economy.  He believes that one of the paths to economic prosperity for Salt Spring will be found in the restoration, stewardship, and cultivation of diversified forest and marine ecosystems for the benefit of our communities and the natural world around us.

Holly is a modern-day dynamo who runs a custom training company Spark + Co, which provides management and training solutions to clients around North America. Holly embodies a balance between savvy-business person and grounded community member. Most recently she is the architect of CEDC’s Rural Business Accelerator program and now the Vice-Chair of the Commission. Additionally, Holly also volunteers with Connecting Generations and Salt Spring Digital.

She moved to Salt Spring in 2008 from Vancouver for the “slower pace of life” and since then the entire family has found themselves involved in many community organizations. Holly also tweets about the island economy as @sparkandco and manages the social media presence for CEDC. Holly loves to kayak, sail and hike and can be found walking her dog on local trails, rain or shine.

With a knack for finding unique and beautiful places to live, Inga, who immigrated to Canada from Germany in 2000, first lived in Whistler, then moved to Salt Spring in 2012. Drawn by its natural beauty and charm, Inga came to the island to raise her kids in a rural setting. In her work, Inga coaches, and trains leaders of organizations on innovation and changing systems. She also consults small companies on business strategy.

Inga holds a BComm in Entrepreneurship and has a particular interest in using business as a force for good. She is the vice president for Transition Salt Spring Enterprise Co-Op, which supports green initiatives and businesses with low-interest microloans. Inga helped the Wagon Wheel Society draft a business plan for the Laundromat and supported the Island Comeback Campaign with administration tasks. In her Commissioner role, Inga plans to contribute to a sustainable economic strategy that creates opportunities for locals to make a right livelihood while respecting the environment.

Dr. Daniel Muzyka is Dean and Professor Emeritus at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He has also been President and Chief Executive Officer of The Conference Board of Canada and Vice-President and Chair of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Previously, he served as the IAF Professor of Entrepreneurship and Associate Dean at INSEAD and taught at other institutions.

Dr. Muzyka has experience in academia, business, and the public sector and has participated on a number of corporate boards, venture capital funds, as well as not-for-profit, regulatory and government organizations, committees and commissions. He worked in industry with General Electric in finance and strategy and was a strategy consultant. He holds a Doctor of Business Administration (Harvard), an MBA (Wharton), and a BA in Physics and Astronomy (Williams College). He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite by the Government of France.