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Roots for Resilience Coastal Communities 

As part of Roots for Resilience, a new pan-Canadian program in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross, we are working with two communities in the Bay St. George area in southwestern Newfoundland. Staff from The Resilience Institute (TRI) and the Canadian Red Cross were invited last October to attend a two-day conference on food security in Stephenville, NL, to learn about what people across Newfoundland and Labrador are doing to build resilient food systems.

Our team returns to Stephenville this spring to meet with community members, further explore some of the local climate-induced hazards, and work towards co-developing meaningful strategies to combat these risks.

Sara Walsh, PhD

Board Member

Dr. Sara Walsh is a disaster risk reduction and climate resilience specialist with more than 15 years of experience spanning Canada, Nepal, the Middle East, and North Africa. Until November 2025, she served as Thematic Lead for Climate and Resilience with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), where she supported Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to strengthen their climate and risk reduction work across the region. Sara currently works as a freelance consultant with the United Nations, governments, and humanitarian organizations on recovery, risk governance, and community-based resilience. She teaches at a Canadian university and holds a PhD in Disaster Risk Reduction. Her work emphasizes anticipatory action, equity, and bridging research with practice to shape more resilient and sustainable futures.

Alison Criscitiello

Board Member

Ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer Alison Criscitiello explores the history of climate and sea ice in polar and high-alpine regions using ice core chemistry. Criscitiello’s work also focuses on environmental contaminant histories in ice cores from the Canadian high Arctic and the water towers of the Canadian Rockies. In 2010, she led the first all-women’s ascent of Lingsarmo, a 22,818-foot peak in the Indian Himalaya. Criscitiello has earned three American Alpine Club (AAC) climbing awards, the John Lauchlan and Mugs Stump alpine climbing awards, as well as the first Ph.D. in Glaciology ever conferred by MIT. Criscitiello is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at the University of Alberta. She is the co-founder of Girls on Ice Canada.