“We’ve got a lot of challenges to solve and we have limited resources, so we have no choice but to multi-solve.”
When facing a crossroads in her early career, Kiri Bird received some advice that changed her outlook. Anna Craycroft, an artist she was collaborating with at the time, offered this idea: “maybe you don’t know what you want to do because it doesn’t exist yet”.
Taking those words to heart, Kiri has carved her own unique career path centred around social and ecological problem-solving. Starting out in international development and social enterprise, then advancing social innovation and investment readiness for social purpose organizations, and also working with First Nations to advance digital equity, she has seen her path unfold across sectors.
While her experience is quite interdisciplinary, some common threads throughout her work include supporting economic reconciliation and bringing new businesses, practices, policies, and social change movements to life.
Fast forward to today, Kiri Bird is currently a Senior Program Manager at TELUS working on sustainability and environmental solutions across the organization. Her portfolio includes sustainable finance and working with TELUS’ reforestation company to integrate nature-based solutions into TELUS’ climate strategy. As part of the corporate Citizenship and Sustainability team, she brings her experience to our Nature Investment Hub Solution Space, where TELUS is a partner.
We spoke with Kiri about the value of investing in professional development, how sustainability and reconciliation are deeply interconnected, and how nature-based solutions should be a part of every company’s strategy. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
You can’t just do good work, you have to talk about the good work you are doing so that others can learn from it. I believe in that kind of commitment to transparency and learning out loud.
Kiri Bird: After working in international development in South America for a number of years, I pursued a master’s degree in Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University.
At the university, I got involved as a student with RADIUS SFU, which was a social impact hub and venture incubator. I helped them to launch a seed fund for students that were doing social innovation projects. After I completed my master’s degree, I led a partnership initiative that was co-led by RADIUS and Ecotrust Canada, which built a social innovation lab focused on inclusive economic development in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
We worked with the City and dozens of non-profit service providers and social enterprises to create something really successful.
This work exposed me to social innovation lab methodologies and led to me to develop a broader body of systems change work at RADIUS, where ultimately, I led the portfolio of innovation labs that helped to scale the organization. While I was there we tripled the size of the organization and ended up working in many different solution areas (not unlike Generate Canada!) that were focused on economic inequality–issues like seniors housing, Indigenous business acceleration, the future of work, and refugee and newcomer integration.
After that experience, I joined the Vancouver Foundation during the early days of the pandemic where I gained some valuable multi-sector experience. I oversaw the investment readiness program as it was rolling out in British Columbia. In late 2020, I joined the First Nations Technology Council where I supported strategic partnership and fundraising in service of Indigenous digital equity. We created hundreds of opportunities for technology training for Indigenous learners and job seekers across British Columbia.
Throughout my career up to that point, I had been collaborating with the private sector, but had yet to work within the sector myself. I decided I wanted to have the experience of working from within a private sector organization to advance social change and enable remarkable human outcomes, and that’s the mandate at TELUS.
I feel like I’ve landed on a great team to be advancing this kind of work through the lens of both climate and addressing inequality in our communities.
I always thought it was strange when we are asked to tick a box to select which sustainable development goals (SDGs) we’re working on with a project—they are so interlinked, it can be really difficult to pull them apart.
The conversation from when I began my work in this field almost 15 years ago has evolved—social and ecological problem-solving are seen as more hand-in-hand, rather than separate pieces of work.
Right now, I think people recognize the situation we are in. We’ve got a lot of challenges to solve and we have limited resources, so we have no choice but to multi-solve. The mission-based problem-solving language you see today is a good example of this change.
This is one of the reasons I’m so attracted to working in nature finance, is because nature encompasses a whole range of social, cultural, and economic values—it’s a great place to be focused on advancing.
I’m motivated by solving challenges. I want to work on hard things. The world’s to-do list, as some people call the SDGs, is a good place to start.
I feel strongly about innovation and bringing new business, practices, policies ,or social change movements to life. That combination of wanting to be useful in society and also work on solving tough challenges—that’s what motivates me.
At TELUS, we are committed to nature restoration, tree-planting and assessing other global opportunities to advance nature-based solutions. And we want to be networked with other organizations, whether that’s asset managers, corporations, Indigenous Nations, or non-profits that are thinking along the same lines.
Working with the Nature Investment Hub creates a great space for collaboration and learning and connecting with other groups who have the same values that we do.
You can’t just do good work, you have to talk about the good work you are doing so that others can learn from it. I believe in that kind of commitment to transparency and learning out loud.
This is one of the reasons I’m so attracted to working in nature finance, is because nature encompasses a whole range of social, cultural, and economic values—it’s a great place to be focused on advancing.
In Canada, as well as in many other global contexts too, understanding the rights, jurisdiction, and responsibilities of Indigenous peoples as stewards of their lands is really important when we think about advancing nature finance.
The nature-based solutions projects we are talking about are ultimately landing on the ground in communities and traditional territories of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. For many sectors there is a gap in their understanding around what this means. Indigenous Peoples are calling for collaboration from the private sector around climate action and environmental stewardship and this is a space of understanding that I would encourage young people getting into this field to spend some time learning about.
Our Indigenous Reconciliation Action Plan and commitment at TELUS are grounded in Indigenous-led frameworks. We’re very privileged to be living in a time where we have access to the work that Indigenous leaders have been developing for decades—like the 94 Calls to Action and 231 Calls for Justice, and more recently frameworks like the National Indigenous Economic Strategy for Canada.
Our work at the intersection of sustainability and reconciliation needs to respond to and be grounded in Indigenous-led frameworks and upholding ethical space.
For us at TELUS, some of the intersection points we work in are around nature restoration in partnership with Indigenous communities, as we’re engaged in planting millions of trees annually. We are looking to have the restoration program be led by the local knowledge of Indigenous community members and ensure that Indigenous perspectives are included in any ecological restoration work we do.
Another huge lever is procurement, whether we are looking at firms to provide environmental monitoring or remediation or clean energy, there is lots of potential for corporations to deepen the integration of their sustainability and reconciliation commitments.
Corporations are made up of people, and we have thousands of employees across Canada who are living with the impacts of climate change. Our employees and customers are being impacted by wildfires, or flooding, or heat domes—it is more present for people than it ever has been.
For businesses, they best operate when there are stable environmental conditions. We don’t give enough credit to the role of biodiversity in that context—it provides the conditions for stability, so that businesses can operate with continuity. Corporations thrive when our environment thrives. So taking that into consideration, where are the opportunities for the greatest collaboration and impact with your stakeholders on the ground? What are the risks that you can leverage your technology, purchasing power, employees, or capital to help mitigate?
All of these things I just mentioned need to happen in combination with looking at value chain emissions and thinking about the direct impact of operations on the environment as well.
A company may want to set science-based targets to reduce emissions, or mobilize when climate-related disasters strike, or maybe provide critical connectivity in response to extreme weather incidents—depending on what kind of company you are, there are different ways to contribute.
In relation to our reforestation efforts, we’ve encountered barriers like wildfires—very tangible environmental destruction that gets in the way of our work. We’ve had to pivot and find new locations to plant, and ensure worker safety too.
At a more strategic level, we need to think creatively and stay focused on unlocking capital for the highest value decarbonization initiatives in a dynamic business environment.
Another thing we encounter is ensuring we’re able to meet the rising expectations of stakeholders around environmental performance and climate strategy and that we are participating in the evolving reporting and disclosure landscape. It’s a high bar we hold ourselves to and even though it moves, we continually work towards meeting it.
One of the most simple and powerful statistics is that in terms of meeting our Paris Agreement targets, nature can provide a third of the solution.
We definitely need to continue investment in renewables and carbon removal, and all the other initiatives that will help us reach these targets, but there is a lot of impact and simplicity to be found in nature-based solutions. Nature is an important part of the puzzle and should be a part of any company’s strategy.
This is one of the reasons I’m so attracted to working in nature finance, is because nature encompasses a whole range of social, cultural, and economic values—it’s a great place to be focused on advancing.
One of the most simple and powerful statistics is that in terms of meeting our Paris Agreement targets, nature can provide a third of the solution.
Investing in my professional networks and development has been key to my career development and growth. I make an effort to take one new course every year or participate in one new learning program. Recently, I took the First Nations Principles of OCAP training.
These are moments to sharpen skills, but also build relationships with people—it’s through experiences like this that I’ve met some of my best friends as well as mentors and peers that have had a huge impact on my career journey.
I also try to talk to young people as much as I can about careers in the impact space, because that’s what really helped me earlier on in my journey. There is so much value in mentorship and building networks.
For me, an indicator of impactful work is that the work is not happening independently. It’s consortiums, collaborations, associations, partnerships—it’s groups that are addressing systems concerns together.
When there is energy and alignment amongst a consortium or partners on an initiative, that means that there’s trust and a willingness to speak publicly about the work together.
You can’t just do good work, you have to talk about the good work you are doing so that others can learn from it. I believe in that kind of commitment to transparency and learning out loud.
I have been taking a break from white papers and reports recently and have been reading fiction! I just read Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. It’s a climate fiction story, which gives me another outlet to process all the hard news we are faced with.
I also just watched Extrapolation, which is an Apple series that tells human stories in a world impacted by climate change. They tackle different topics around biodiversity loss and sea level rise, or geoengineering. It’s really well done and provocative and gives us lots to think about the impact of climate change in our lifetimes.
To learn more about TELUS’ work in sustainability and environmental solutions, visit their website. And while you are at it, check out the work of Nature Investment Hub too.
One of the most simple and powerful statistics is that in terms of meeting our Paris Agreement targets, nature can provide a third of the solution.
