Claire Remington (She/her)
Executive Director

Claire is a settler with German, British, and Irish ancestry that has lived on Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories for the past five years. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya where her parents worked for an international humanitarian agency. She holds a BA in Chemistry from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and a MASc in Civil Engineering from the University of Victoria.

Claire is an interdisciplinary researcher with a decade of work experience focused on improving communities’ sustainability and resilience. Before working for the CEC, Claire spent 8 years working for SOIL, a non-governmental organization that operates a household sanitation and thermophilic composting waste treatment service in Haiti. Her strengths include project management, financial analysis, stakeholder consultation, and technical communication. She has also taught university-level courses with a focus on sustainable natural resource management, public health engineering, and sustainable cities.

Haya Aldoori (she/her)

Child & Youth Education Coordinator

Haya Aldoori is a settler with Lebanese, Iraqi, and Palestinian ancestry. She grew up on Dish with One Spoon territories and has been living on the territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples since 2021.

As a long-time facilitator of outdoor learning, she is passionate about cultivating care and connection to the land in her community. She is motivated by the belief that connection to the land  is essential in building a resilient and equitable future for all.

In her role as Site Assistant, Haya is an energetic member of the team, contributing her skills, knowledge, experience, and other gifts to supporting the CEC’s mission and community-based work.

In her free time, you can find Haya watching/photographing birds, saying hi to neighborhood cats, and running around on the soccer field.

Jeffrey Ellom (he/him)
Child & Youth Education Coordinator

Jeffrey Ellom is a settler of Ewe and mixed European descent who grew up on unceded Syilx Okanagan territory. He’s been living on unceded Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories since 2014. Jeffrey joined the CEC in 2021, and has helped to develop and deliver workshops to children and youth throughout the CRD as part of the Education Team. He loves creating puppets and props to help make big ideas like soil stewardship accessible to young minds.

Jeffrey studied biology in university, and is a life-long learner with particular enthusiasm for plant and microbe ecologies. He also holds an awareness of the institution of science as a colonizing force, whose methods of extracting and gatekeeping knowledge and privileging of Eurowestern perspectives have come at a cost to Indigenous peoples here on Turtle Island and worldwide. With this in mind, Jeffrey looks for ways to educate young people about living systems in ways that inspire an ethic of interdependence and responsibility toward human and more-than-human communities. He also works to involve youth in community-based citizen science, to encourage a shift toward science that is more conscientious and equitable.

When Jeffrey isn’t teaching kids about composting or native pollinators, he’s usually looking after the CEC’s worms or rummaging for soil to look at under the microscope. He’s also a visual and musical artist who loves cycling and sewing clothes.

Zoë-Blue Coates (she/her)
Office Manager & Communications Coordinator

Zoe-Blue is a queer Afro-Caribbean and African-American woman born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto, ON). Her passions include music, textile art and design, and cooking.

She holds a degree in Canadian History and Indigenous studies from the University of Victoria. Her research focused on how Canadians learn about the history of the lands they’re on. Studying history taught her ways to take lessons from the past and use them to build community.

Through the Compost Education Centre, Zoe-Blue has combined her passion for knowledge and community. She enjoys creating informative and accessible educational resources like the BioDiversity zine for school age children. Zoe-Blue has enjoyed many facets of working at the Compost Education Centre including: connecting with community members interested in ecological stewardship, planting and harvesting fruits and vegetables, and learning more about the importance of insects in the composting process.

Kayla Siefried (she/her)

Education Director

Kayla Siefried is a settler in Lekwungen Territory and grew up in Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory. Kayla is the steward of the Compost Education Centre demonstration gardens and the curator and main educator of the Adult Education Program. She can be found growing seedlings for plant sales, working with volunteers to keep gardens healthy, flipping hot compost, arranging expert instructors to teach workshops, or out in the community teaching about soil health, organic gardening, and Do-It-Yourself tasks that increase our climate resilience. Kayla holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo, and she continued on with practical hands-on permaculture training, gardening and farming internships in various places on Turtle Island and beyond.

Kayla is passionate about sharing her knowledge with people young and old through formal and informal education. She’s facilitated youth programs for sustainability all across Canada, Guatemala, and Cambodia, and has a zest for travel and adventure. Kayla sees the act of growing food and stewarding the soil as one that can heal on many levels. A keen sustainability activist, Kayla finds meaning in advocating for and living an environmentally sustainable life that involves bicycles, healthy food systems, and a good amount of outdoor dancing!

Elora Adamson (she/they)
Child and Youth Education Manager

Elora is a white settler with Dutch, British and Irish ancestry and was raised on Treaty 1 territory. She has been living on Lkwungen and WSÁNEĆ territories for the past 8 years and has a BA in Environmental Studies and Political Science from the University of Victoria.

Elora has long been involved in ecological education and has been managing the CEC’s Child and Youth Education Program since 2021. As a part of her role Elora teaches workshops to all ages, and facilitates the semester long Let it Rot Program at High schools in SD61. Elora has a special interest in food waste, native plants and all things mycology. She loves getting to share her passion for these topics with students with the aim of learning how to connect with, and care for, the land we live on.

When she’s not at work, you can find her in the ceramic studio, working on her fungi ID skills with the mycological society or cooking food with her roommates.

Martyna Tomczynski (she/her)
Healing City Soils Manager

Martyna Tomczynski is a second generation Polish-Canadian who grew up in the traditional territory of the Algonquin People. She is the Manager of the Compost Education Centre’s Healing City Soils Program which offers free soil testing to gardeners and food growers in the CRD, and explores research in soil toxicology and low-tech bioremediation techniques. She holds a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Royal Roads University and is currently completing her master’s degree in the same field with an emphasis on urban soil management. She is registered with the BC Institute of Agrologists, and her career to date has primarily focused on agricultural best management practices, ecological restoration, and ecosystem information technology. Martyna is passionate about soil health, accessible science communication, and helping individuals take meaningful action in their own backyards to promote resilient, thriving ecosystems in urban environments. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, sewing, making jewelry, and volunteering with local conservation groups.

Monika Borchert (They/them)
Board Chair

Monika is a project manager focusing on initiatives that bolster accessibility, inclusion, and community. They studied film at Toronto Metropolitan University and worked for years in documentary before transitioning into arts and culture administration and ultimately into their current advocacy work.  You can find them foraging on trails, knitting on the beach, or growing medicinal plants in their yard. They are queer, genderqueer, and a settler, new to these Lekwungen lands, both inspired and motivated by the community web at the CEC.

Alison Ramsay (she/her)
Vice-Chair & Treasurer

Alison moved back to Victoria a few years ago, wanting to spend more time outdoors in nature. This led to more time gardening, which in turn led her to attend a composting workshop at the CEC. This showed her what can be done on a local level to have real, effective impact in improving not just the soil in our back yards but the environment as a whole. It felt like a lightbulb going off!

Since joining the CEC board in 2022 as Secretary and now Treasurer, Alison is enjoying deploying skills and knowledge acquired during her senior management career in the field of specialty commercial insurance and risk management. Alison’s strengths include strategic planning and financial and contract analysis, and she hopes to continue contributing these to support the fantastic work of the staff and volunteers of the CEC.

Ash Whelan (she/her)
Secretary

Ash is a a transplant from Saskatchewan who has cultivated deep roots here in beautiful Lekwungun territory. For the past 7 years, she has managed a small but mighty urban farm in Vic West that grows thousands of pounds of food each year for restaurants and the surrounding community. She is also a student of the Soil Food Web School and is working towards becoming a Soil Food Web Lab Technician, which involves analyzing soil samples under the microscope to understand the biology, and therefore the health of, the soil ecosystem in question. She loves all things compost related, and is so excited about this new opportunity to connect, learn, and collaborate with many of you to continue the amazing work of the CEC!

Bowen Macy (he/him)
Member-at-Large

Bowen Arbutus Macy is a member of the Compost Education Centre’s board of directors and a neighbor living just down the road. With a day job in sustainability technology, his background weaves together a passion for community organizing and a commitment to building sustainable systems—whether through workshops, music, or events that connect people to each other and the land. He was drawn to the CEC for the way it blends practical skills like composting, gardening, and food preservation with a deeper practice of land-based resiliency. Bowen first came across the CEC after moving to the neighborhood, poking his head in and promptly asking a million questions, a pattern he continues to repeat in board meetings. Outside of his work with the Centre, Bowen hosts Third Place Radio on CFUV, spends time rifling through his mom’s old CD collection, and thinks about ways to inspire local environmental action. He believes in the CEC as a place for people to gather, learn, and imagine, even just for an afternoon in the garden with a cup of tea. That’s the kind of thing he’d like to help grow.

Tina Tulloch
Member-at-Large

Bio coming soon.

Cassidy Daskalchuk (she/her)
Member-at-Large

Cassidy grew up on Treaty 4 Territory in Saskatchewan, where her early years among farmers and gardeners sparked a lifelong love of growing food and playing in the soil. This passion led her to pursue a BSc in Environmental and Soil Science, deepening her understanding of the vital link between climate action and food security. Before relocating to Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories in 2022, Cassidy served as the Food Security Coordinator at the University of Regina. There, she led campus-wide initiatives to improve food access and develop gardening programs, deepening her appreciation for the transformative power of community-driven food systems. Since then, Cassidy has worked as a farmhand, Agriculture and Food Security Planner and most recently, Sustainability Planner. Cassidy enjoys playing outside, singing sad songs and being a bird nerd. 

Jennifer Lukianchuk (she/her)
Member-at-Large

Jennifer is a seasoned environmental professional with over 20 years experience working for local government in both the lower mainland and currently (last 3 years!) on the beautiful Saanich Peninsula.  As a strong advocate for the environment, Jennifer brings a unique blend of expertise and passion to the Compost Education Centre.

Her ability to drive a local government’s environmental agenda, has helped set the path forward for the communities she has served.  Some roles included developing strategic environmental plans, serving on various Committees and collaborating with local community groups in environmental stewardship efforts.

Jennifer joined the Compost Education Centre because she is believes composting and gardening is super important for all to try.  She feels that every hands-on experience with nature leads to a greater appreciation and respect for the environment.

In her personal time, Jennifer enjoys playing underwater hockey, hiking, x-country skiing and being outdoors and can be found in her backyard gardening and nurturing the red wiggler worms in her composters!