Women Leaders in the Environmental and Engineering Sector

Facilitator: Claudine Vidallo
Vice President of Projects

Claudine Vidallo is a strategic planner, business analyst and program manager and in the last decade has initiated, lead, executed and evaluated multi-stakeholder, and multi-phased projects. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with a Business Management background. In the last 20 years, Claudine has applied her competencies in various industries in the Philippines and Canada including food and beverage manufacturing, energy, post-secondary and training institutions, and not-for-profit organizations. Claudine’s other full-time job is being a mother of five boys including twin stepsons. She was also very active in sports and fitness in her past life and has a 1st degree blackbelt in Taekwondo.

Speaker: Justyna Kos-Fairless
Projects Group Director

Justyna Kos-Fairless is currently a Director within the Projects group at Suncor. She completed her undergrad at Ecole Polytechnique in Geological Engineering and has an MBA from the University of Calgary. During her career, that spans over two decades, she has occupied both technical and managerial roles. She always remained connected to her technical background, is on the board of directors of the Canadian geotechnical society and just finished co-chairing their annual national conference

Speaker: Somia Sadiq
Founder of Narratives Inc.

With ancestral roots in post-colonial Punjab and Kashmir, Somia brings a strong drive to decolonize our ways of thinking, knowing, and being. Somia is the founder of Narratives Inc., a consulting firm based out of Winnipeg that provides services in Impact Assessment, Territorial Planning, and Research and Analysis, and the founder of Kahanee, a non-profit with a focus on amplifying stories, and storytelling for peacebuilding. Her portfolio includes: negotiations, strategic communications, social programming, capacity building and training, and development and execution of trauma-informed engagement programs. Somia also sits on the Minister's Advisory Council on Impact Assessment, which provides the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change with advice related to implementation of Impact Assessment in Canada.

Speaker: Najlaa Rauf
VP, People & Culture (Human Resources) | Spark Power Corp.

Najlaa is Spark Power’s Vice President of People & Culture (Human Resources). She has over 10 years of experience in employee engagement, human resources and leadership development in non-profit, education and electrical contracting services. She is responsible for leading the organization in the areas of culture, and talent attraction, retention and development. Najlaa started her career in fundraising and volunteer engagement with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. After achieving her Masters in Business Administration in Human Resources, she lead the Student Engagement team at the Goodman School of Business (Brock University) for four years developing leadership programs for high-potential student leaders and managing the undergraduate student recruitment portfolio. In 2017, Najlaa joined Spark Power to lead and develop the Human Resources function with a focus on integration of multiple acquisitions. She currently represents Spark Power on the Electricity Human Resources of Canada Empowering Futures Steering Committee. In addition to achieving her MBA from Brock University, Najlaa has an undergraduate degree in Life Sciences from McMaster University.

Speaker: Katherine Johnston
Principal Geological Engineer, Strategy Lead | BGC Engineering Inc.

Katherine Johnston, M.Sc., P.Eng., P.Geo., is a Principal Geological Engineer working for BGC Engineering Inc. based out of BGC’s Kamloops, BC Office. She currently leads BGC’s Strategic Planning, and contributes to many other aspects of business management. She has over 19 years of leadership, technical and project management experience on a broad range of geotechnical and hydrogeological projects throughout western and northern Canada. For the past ten years, her project work has been focused on routing, designing and constructing new pipeline projects and on geohazard management for operating pipelines. Katherine has developed strong leadership skills through multi-disciplinary project management, office management, leading BGC’s pipeline sector team and leading the development and execution BGC’s corporate strategy. She is particularly passionate about people-forward leadership and about using engineering and geoscience to make the world a better place.