Board Table Disruption

Yvette Nolan

Yvette Nolan (Algonquin) is a playwright, director and dramaturg. Her works include the play The Unplugging, the dance-opera Bearing, the libretto Shawnadithit. Her play Katharsis will open Prairie Theatre Exchange’s 2020/21 season on October 29th.  From 2003-2011, she served as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her book, Medicine Shows, about Indigenous performance in Canada was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy in Saskatchewan.

Martha Rans

Martha Rans is a lawyer specializing in the legal needs of non-profit societies as well as many visual and multimedia digital artists. She has been practicing law in British Columbia since 1997 and spent 10 years as a labour employment and human rights lawyer/mediator with the BC and Ontario governments. She is a recognized expert on both Canada’s Copyright Act as well as the BC Societies Act. She advises on copyright, charity law, incorporation, privacy, employment, labour, health & safety, and human rights. In all this work, Martha also advocates for public legal education and information for the non-profit and arts sector through her work as the Founder and Legal Director of Pacific Legal Education and Outreach Society home of the Artists Legal Outreach and Law for Non-Profits.(pacificlegaloutreach.com)

Mark Friesen

Mark Friesen is the Executive Director at Columbia College, Canada’s longest established International not-for-profit college. He currently facilitates a monthly peer network of leaders dedicated to reimagining governance in the non-profit sector. Mark has served as a volunteer, association founder, and an executive director, and has led fundraising, strategic planning and program development efforts in the sector for over 20 years. During his time at Vantage Point, BC’s leading not-for-profit capacity builder, Mark shifted his focus to governance; working with groups to enhance or redefine organizational decision making. Working with the Crown Agency Board Resourcing Office of BC, Mark guided the province to shift the governance and training material of BC’s public sector organizations away from shareholder accountability and towards governance in the public interest. Mark obtained his Masters’ in Urban Studies at SFU where he received two fellowships and a convocation medal for his research into governance at the scale of the city-region. He served on the City of Vancouver Election Task Force, is Chair of the Our Place Inner City Governance Committee, and sits on the Board of the Ripple Coast Society. When it comes to governance, Mark has a unique perspective on the role that not-for-profits have in supporting a democratic society.