Karen Farbridge Mayor City of Guelph, Ontario

During her 9 year tenure in municipal politics, Karen championed sustainable approaches to waste management, water and waste water management, transportation planning, natural area protection and community planning.

During her 3 years as Mayor, Karen initiated an extensive community consultation process designed to develop a strategic framework to manage community change. The resulting plan -- called SmartGuelph -- was based on a set of community-derived principles and adopted a triple bottom line approach to decision making: environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Prior to entering municipal politics Karen worked for 10 years as the Director of the Ontario Public Interest Research Group (Guelph), a non-profit environmental and social justice organization based on the University of Guelph campus.

Karen currently works on strategic initiatives for the Office of V.P. Research at the University of Guelph and is teaching courses on sustainability, democracy and environmental policy for the Department of Political Science.

Karen graduated with an M.Sc (1985) and Ph.D (1989) in animal physiology from the University of Guelph . She regularly speaks and writes on issues of urban sustainability.