Gwen PatricK on economic nutrition

Gwen Patrick will be sharing her experience in holistic economic development at Harmony Centre’s Small Communities Solutions conference with her presentation: Economic Nutrition for the Place We Live. Gwen is the Financial Innovation Lead at the Shorefast Institute on Fogo Island, overseeing program execution and financial and economic toolset development.

Like Harmony Centre, the Shorefast Institute is a social enterprise, in fact one of Canada’s largest, working to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, a 400 year-old outport fishing community critically impacted by the decline of the cod fishery and the related moratorium established in 1992.

She grew up on Salt Spring Island, BC, where she founded the Foundation of Youth, a youth advisory committee of the Salt Spring Island Foundation. While earning her Bachelor of Commerce at Queen’s University, she received the Kehoe Fellowship, enabling her to intern with Shorefast on Fogo Island. After graduation, she obtained her CPA designation and worked in public accounting at a Big Four firm before returning to Shorefast.

For more information on the Small Communities Solutions Conference, click here.