Board of Directors
Christine Thuring
President / Co-Chair
Christine Thuring is a founding director of the Society and was an active volunteer right from the start. She co-established and continues to co-edit The Quarterly Buzz newsletter. In 2021-2022, Christine served as Secretary. She is pleased to serve a third (and final) term as co-chair with Sky Jarvis.
With a background in environmental science and plant biology, Christine is passionate about native bees, green roofs and climate action. While her career began in applied plant ecology, for the last 20 years Christine has worked predominantly in the urban context. As a Green Roof Professional and a Meadow Maker, she is committed to enhancing conditions for biodiversity, including the built environment.
Sky Jarvis
Vice-President / C0-Chair
Sky graduated from the Faculty of Forestry at UBC in 2021 and currently works for a Community Forest in the rural town of Barrière. She currently lives in Kamloops, in the heart of BC grassland region, with her son, Cedar. Sky has been with the Society for four years, starting as a member-at-large before transitioning to the Secretary role for the past two years, she is excited to step into the co-chair role for the next two years. Sky has helped get the Society affiliated with BC Nature and Bee City Canada - she looks forward to strengthening and expanding these connections with other organizations as the Society moves forward with its provincial BC Bee Atlas. Sky holds a profound appreciation for Nature, especially BC's 500+ species of Native Bees - this can be seen in her work for the society and her participation in public education and outreach events.
Jane Lakes
Secretary
Jane is a professional beekeeper and native bee enthusiast based in Vancouver. She has worked in the apiculture industry since 2019 and is dedicated to changing beekeeping practices and culture to help mitigate the impact of honeybee hives on wild bee species. She has been volunteering with the Native Bee Society of British Columbia since spring of 2024 and is a student in the Master Mellitologist program with Oregon State University.
Nikki Donkersley
Treasurer
Nikki is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and has an extensive background in accounting and finance. She dedicated twelve years of her professional career to working in the non-profit sector for a registered charity. Nikki joined the Native Bee Society of BC as Treasurer in February 2022, combining her enthusiasm for bees with her love of numbers. Nikki and her husband live in Dawson Creek, BC with their two teenage sons. When she is not "crunching the numbers", she can be found working in her garden or at the school gymnasium cheering on her son's basketball team.
Lincoln Best
Member-at-Large
Lincoln leads the Oregon Bee Atlas and Master Melittologist programs in the faculty of Horticulture and through Extension at Oregon State University. He hosts an annual BC Native Bee Course in the southern Okanagan, Canada's bee biodiversity hotspot. Stay tuned for details about the 2025 course.
Bonnie Zand
Member-at-Large
Bonnie Zand is an RPBio based out of the Comox Valley, on Vancouver Island. She works in the intersections of pollinators and agriculture, running an IPM consulting company, Bonnie’s Bugs IPM. Bonnie is the BC instructor for the Master Melittolgist Program and also teaches the NBSBC’s Mini Bee Schools. She loves to help others learn how awesome bees are, and is passionate about the societies BC Bee Atlas. Bonnie also contributes to pollinator conservation through outreach to garden clubs, bee clubs, and school groups.
Bonnie is excited to be continuing with the board for a fourth year, and intends to continue to run the Native Bee Study Group, support the BC Master Melittologist program, lead the BC Bee Atlas and help with grant writing for to the society.
Valerie Huff
Member-at-Large
Valerie is a restoration botanist and native plant conservation advocate with a keen interest in pollination networks. She lives in Nelson BC and is a founding member (and current treasurer) of the Kootenay Native Plant Society. She is fascinated by complexity of plant-pollinator relationships, and is involved in numerous restoration projects with a pollinator focus.
Valerie is interested in bringing a plant perspective and expertise to the conversation about native bee conservation, as she strongly believes that they go hand in hand and is excited by the potential for cross-pollination.
Maureen Marriott
Member-at-Large
Newsletter
Maureen has worked for many years at the University of British Columbia and Emily Carr University of Art + Design in the field of adult continuing education. Now she is passionate about learning more about BC’s incredible biodiversity, and donating her time to organizations working to further environmental conservation, restoration, education and advocacy.​
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Gwendolyn Williams
Member-at-Large
Fundraising
Gwendolyn is a citizen scientist, melittology student, and lifelong artist. She comes from a family of avid gardeners, and has a special interest in PNW native herbaceous plants. She maintains a pollinator garden in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, and cultivates native seeds to distribute to the community. She is the owner of a tattoo studio in downtown Victoria for the last 15 years, and specializes in illustrative botanical/nature design, and graphic design. She uses her artist platform to educate the community and regularly fundraises for various conservation programs with a focus on pollinators. She has a special passion for bees and their favourite native plants!
Tamara Litke
Member-at-Large
Tamara is an outdoor educator focused on place-based learning about bees, plants and people. She has led projects in community, school, and botanical gardens in BC. She has developed urban greening projects, public education initiatives, and produced curriculum and events for people of all ages. She has a comprehensive knowledge of native plant nurseries and best practices to support habitat and pollinator recovery. She has an Honours Specialist degree in Art and Art History, a BFA in Ceramics, and a Masters of Education in Sustainability. Her current PhD studies in Ecology and Consciousness focus on connecting with our natural relationships.
Paula Cruise
Member-at-Large
Paula’s interest in wild bees grew as a natural extension to her passion for gardening for people and pollinators through her work with Hives for Humanity, a non-profit society based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Now enrolled in Oregon State University’s Master Melittologist program, she never fails to be amazed by the amazing biodiversity of bees and their associated plants in the Pacific Northwest and is particularly interested in how farms and backyards can support these critical pollinators. Her nursery, Buzzing Greens, focuses on vegetable plants and herbs started from local, open pollinated seeds that offer joy and nourishment in the smallest of spaces.
Paula has been a member of the Native Bee Society of BC since its founding in 2019 and joined the Board of Directors in 2020. For the past two years, Paula has been thrilled to co-chair the board alongside Christine Thuring. For 2025, Paula aims to contribute to the Society’s education and outreach programming and to its ongoing financial stability through grants and fundraising.
Founding Board Members
Sarah Johnson
Founding President
Sarah Johnson is a broadly trained ecologist specializing in bumble bee conservation. She grew up in B.C. and considers it home, but over the course of her 10+ year career has led many projects focused on wild bees across the country. She was the founding president of the society for the first 2.5 years of its life, and has been thrilled to watch it evolve and grow well beyond those initial hopes and dreams of its infancy. She moved back to her home town of Salmon Arm in the spring of 2022 to manage her late father’s small manufacturing business, and is in the final stages of completing her PhD studying the impacts of wildfire on bumble bees in the remote forests of the west Chilcotin. Sarah continues to deliver native bee and native plant education and outreach for her community on behalf of the society as a member and honorary board associate, and hopes to return to a more involved role in the future.
If you ‘d like to talk Bumblebees you can email Sarah at sajohnsonecol@gmail.com
Marika Ai-Li (愛丽)
Founding Vice-President
Marika is wild about native bees and flowers! She's a led a variety of pollinator education, stewardship and native bee community science programs across Coast Salish territories over the past decade. She now lives in K'omoks territory working with Project Watershed as a Restoration and Monitoring Lead. Marika formerly worked for the Coastal Douglas Fir Conservation Partnership and the Environmental Youth Alliance where she managed projects focused on species-at-risk conservation, habitat restoration and land-based education programs. She holds a BSc in Applied Biology, Plant & Soil Sciences from UBC and is completing the Restoration of Natural Systems Diploma at UVic.
Lori Weidenhammer
Founding Member
Lori, aka Madame Beespeaker (she/her)
is a Vancouver performance-based interdisciplinary artist and educator. She is a settler originally from a tiny hamlet called Cactus Lake Saskatchewan. It is in this place, bordered by wheat fields and wild prairie, that she first became enchanted with bees. She is the author of an award-winning book called Victory Gardens for Bees: A DIY Guide for Saving the Bees published by Douglas and McIntyre. She is working on a revised version of this book to be released in the spring of 2025. Lori continues to work with the society as an educator extraordinaire focusing on bees and botany. She is the co-creator (with Tyler Kelly) and co-curator (with Lincoln Best) of the NBSBC Bee Tracker project on iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/nbsbc-bee-tracker), where she has helped ID over 20, 000 bees with the help of many other taxonomists and naturalists and helped to connect bee species to the flowers they visit in their bioregion. Lori works to be positive force giving people of all ages new ways to connect to the beauty and wonder of BC’s native bees.
Lori's web site is https://loriweidenhammer.ca/
Follow Lori on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/loriweidenhammer.ca
Jasna Guy
Founding Member
Jasna was an artist, educator, and citizen scientist with a passion for pollinators. Since 2012, her art practice involved extensive study of the relationships between plants and their pollinators, and the floral resources (pollen and nectar) that pollinators require.
Tyler Kelly
Founding Member
Tyler is currently the lab manager for the WoRCS lab at UBC, led by Dr. Claire Kremen, where he works with a collective of experts in agricultural sustainability and biodiversity. He has a MSc from SFU studying plant-pollinator networks in Garry oak habitats, and has worked in wildlife biology for almost a decade.
Chanta Ly
Founding Member
Chanta has an extensive background in administration and currently works at a law firm in downtown Vancouver, but in her heart, she is a passionate nature enthusiast. She has a wide range of volunteer experience in conservation and restoration and has tended a pollinator garden since 2015.
Brian Campbell
Founding Member
Brian is a master gardener, master beekeeper, adult education instructor at VanDusen Gardens, and consultant and advisor for many other native bee-related projects throughout the Greater Vancouver Area. His main position is at West Coast Seeds as the purchasing and production coordinator, and he has had a lifelong passion for native bee biodiversity, education, and conservation.
Leslie Williams
Founding Member
Leslie Williams is the Director of Operations of The Sharing Farm Society in Richmond, and Apiary Manager of Hives For Humanity in Vancouver. Through community education and planting projects for pollinators, she advocates for native bee health, habitat, and diversity.
Martina Clausen
Founding Member
Martina is an agroecologist with a background in environmental engineering, originally from Switzerland. She has an MSc from UBC studying the conservation of native bees in agricultural landscapes and was a member of the development team for EYA’s Pollinator Citizen Science Program.
Riley Waytes
Founding Member
Riley is a terrestrial ecologist with LGL Limited based in Sidney, BC, working on surveys of bumble bees and other arthropods in disturbed and reclaimed environments. He has an MSc from the University of Calgary studying native and managed pollinators in canola. He is involved with the Victoria Natural History Society and the Entomological Society of BC, and volunteers with the Royal BC Museum.
Former Directors
Lori Weidenhammer
Cassie Gibeau
Melissa Haynes
Jens Johnson
Jennifer Lipka
Ian Tait
Joshua Thompson
Erin Udal
Jen Woodin
Jade Lee
Julia Taylor
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