We specialize in advising business, governments and organizations on building healthy and prosperous communities. We believe that effective community engagement in local decisions leads to innovation, and makes a lasting positive impact.
Our expertise is in managing complex policy and decision making environments to deliver lasting results. In particular, our work focusses on supporting communities in navigating the energy transition to lower emissions and stronger local economies.
We draw on our experience and leadership to help you plan and execute business strategies, keeping them on time and on budget. We can help you navigate the tricky waters of government relations, stakeholder and community engagement, and development approval.
We believe strong collaboration brings the best to our clients. We work to make the most out of the resources you have. And we complement our projects with an extensive network of collaborators as wide as the field we consult in.
We are all about connecting people and ideas. We just can't help ourselves. As a result, we are involved in a substantial way with several organizations who also work for healthy and prosperous communities. We are urban connectors!
Karen Farbridge is a proven change agent who knows how to effectively provoke new conversations and inspire innovation.
She has been recognised by local, provincial and national organizations for her leadership and commitment to building more liveable and sustainable communities. Her strength lies in her ability to manage complex policy and decision making environments to deliver results. This experience includes eleven years as the mayor of Guelph.
Drawing from her extensive experience, she can help you get out of the weeds and think about big picture opportunities and how to implement them.
Connecting people and ideas is best done in person. Karen Farbridge is a skilled communicator with a wide range of successes and experiences to draw on. If your event needs a keynote, panelist or guest facilitator, Karen will build an immediate connection with your audience. Karen is speaking at the following events:
Energy Conscious Communities
Date: March 28, 2020
Location: Toronto
Host: Canadian Federation of University Women
“Karen’s vision for the renewal of our downtown not only paid economic dividends to the entire city through the growth of the tax base but established a positive environment for collaboration and innovation. Her consensus-oriented approach helped to bring together players from every sector and political leaning to create exciting initiatives.”
Doug Minett, co-founder of The Bookshelf & CEO, Talonedge
“Karen is a change agent who can effectively challenge status quo thinking and approaches to provoke new conversations and inspire innovation.”
Kate Power, Executive Director, Family Counselling & Support Services for Guelph-Wellington
“Karen Farbridge has been the best municipal leader in Canada in advancing a sustainable city future. Adding to that is the most advanced community energy plan in the country. Ever since I was in Guelph a few years ago to kick off the Guelph sustainable city citizen’s engagement process, I’ve followed Guelph’s incredible progress and success under Mayor Farbridge’s leadership.”
Michael Harcourt, former Mayor of Vancouver & former Premier of British Columbia
“Karen was hired on by MyHEAT for her strong connections in both government and environmental affairs in the province of Ontario. Needless to say, she was extremely influential in getting us meetings with decision makers and municipal leaders that we likely would not have obtained otherwise. Karen has a solid understanding of the political landscape and how best to approach it with our business. I would highly recommend Karen and would not hesitate to contract her for similar business in the future.”
Chris Pettigrew, Business Development, MyHEAT
“Karen has an incredible ability to engage with individuals and groups to probe for insights and new perspectives. She effectively leads conversation that generate new ideas and models for solving complex energy challenges."
Ian McVey, Project Manager, Ontario Climate Consortium
Informed and engaged citizens make our communities great. Urban connectors are innovators, change makers, and city builders. They are people who get involved to make their community a better place. With two-thirds of the world population estimated to be urban dwellers by 2050, we need to get cities right – for people, governments and budgets. More than 8 of 10 Canadian already live in urban environments where there are endless opportunities to grow healthy and prosperous communities. This blog explores some of these possibilities with a focus on energy and climate change.
March 10, 2021 — An effective community energy plan will have engaged a broad cross-section of the community in its development. The simple reason why is that successful implementation rests on the buy-in and contributions of the community - public sector, private sector, civil society and individuals. Maintaining momentum after the initial planning process can be challenging. Communities quickly learn that they don’t...
November 11, 2020 — Community energy planning allows a community to understand their local energy system so they can identify the best local opportunities to reduce energy consumption, emissions, and costs. This is what it means to be an energy conscious community. So, community energy planning is going with the tide when it comes to fighting climate change. Half of Canada’s greenhouse gas...
November 10, 2020 — What is an energy conscious community? There are lots of technical ways to describe it, but I believe it comes down to this. An energy conscious community understands its local energy system. When we relied on a pre-industrial energy system – when we burned wood for warmth and to cook our food, raised working animals to plow the land...