Claire Remington, Executive Director

Claire (she/her) 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.

Kayla Siefried, Site Manager & Adult Education Coordinator

Kayla Siefried (she/her) 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!

Zoë-Blue Coates, Office Manager & Communications Coordinator

Zoe-Blue Coates (she/her) is a queer Black woman who was born and raised on One Dish One Spoon territories in Tkaronto (Toronto,ON). Her ancestors are from West Africa, China, Scotland, and nations not yet known to her.

As Administration and Communications Coordinator, Zoe-Blue promotes the CEC’s educational resources. In her role, she works on the CEC’s social media, networks with like-minded organizations, and speaks to CRD residents via phone call, email, and in-person.

During her first few months at the CEC, Zoe-Blue created the BioDiversity zine. This project tells the stories of non-white ecological stewards throughout history. Ecological stewards build relationships of respect and reciprocity with the lands they live on and all it’s living-beings. These people have had lasting impacts on industries like botany, agriculture, permaculture, agro-forestry, foraging, and herbal medicine. Due to the white-washing of the history of ecological stewardship, many youth like Zoe-Blue believe that any interest in ecological stewardship was a sign of their assimilation into whiteness. She created the zine to push back against that notion and show today’s youth that their passion for the earth makes their ancestors proud.

In her free time, Zoe-Blue learns about herbal medicine, befriends her neighbourhood’s crows, and cooks.

Elora Adamson, Child and Youth Education Manager

Elora (she/they) 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.

Jeffrey Ellom, Child & Youth Education Coordinator

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.

Haya Aldoori, Site Assistant