GROWING UP IN RURAL ONTARIO, JILL HAS LONG HAD A PASSION FOR THE OUTDOORS AND A LOVE FOR TEACHING.

For a decade, Jill worked to create connections between technology and nature as a high school geography and media arts teacher, promoting experiential education and leading numerous excursions, including a science-focused field trip to Nicaragua.

When she found resource gaps, Jill worked to fill them – first off the side of her desk and eventually in the full-time pursuit of system-wide education resource development. Jill helped establish a school council for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada and with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, she worked to build a multi-faceted training program to better equip teachers to execute STEAM techniques.

No matter the project, Jill’s hallmark is balanced research and engaging communication, aiming to ignite a passion in others to think critically, work collaboratively and demand better of our world. She has a proven understanding of how to develop innovative programming from development to curriculum integration to classroom implementation. Jill’s unique insight is at the heart of Nature Labs’ design – for only a teacher knows what a teacher needs.

SIMON IS A STORYTELLER AND MOVEMENT BUILDER WHO HAS DEDICATED HIS LIFE TO FINDING A BETTER BALANCE BETWEEN THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE AND NATURE.

At the age of 13, Simon founded the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition in the quest to save Canada’s endangered white Kermode or spirit bear on Canada’s west coast. Through the Youth Coalition, Simon used positive storytelling to help unite the voices of more than six million young people in over 85 countries. After two decades of work, the spirit bear was saved, with its last intact habitat protected through one of the largest land protection measures in North American history. More importantly to Simon, the final land-use agreement was a hard-forged consensus between disparate stakeholders that was supported, polls say, by nearly 90% of British Columbians.

Simon has received several honours for his work, including being awarded Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal, being named as one of the 100 Angels of the Earth by UNESCO and, most notably, being honoured as one of Time Magazine’s sixty Heroes for the Planet – one of only six young people selected from around the world. His life’s work inspired the internationally televised movie Spirit Bear: The Simon Jackson Story.

Simon is an accomplished motivational speaker with agency Speakers’ Spotlight, an award-winning photographer and a widely published writer, having been named a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Writers. A former CBC columnist, Simon has contributed images and chapters to nine books, in addition to having numerous essays and opinion editorials published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals, web sites and textbooks around the world – most underpinned by his photography.

His varied work has enabled Simon to travel coast-to-coast-to-coast to share the lessons from his journey, and listen to those of others. Indeed, Simon’s unique ability to bridge divides, build consensus and tell powerful stories that inspire is the foundation on which Nature Labs is built.