Leadership for the
ECOZOIC

Lynn is a citizen of the Kanienkehá:ka Nation and Haudenosaunee Confederacy on her father’s side, adopted into the Turtle Clan, and mixed settler ancestry on her mother’s side. She grew up in her father’s community of Kahnawà:ke, located on the shores of the St. Lawrence River near Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), where she continues to live and work.

Lynn holds a Bachelor of Environmental Sciences in Ecology and a Master of Environment and Management. She spent more than two decades working in her home community caring for lands and waters, monitoring, mapping, protection, and restoration. After many years as a Scientific Advisor and Project Coordinator for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, she helped to establish a new Environment Protection Unit and acted as its inaugural Director for five years. She later joined the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada as Director of Programs supporting programs in Canada and Africa, followed by working with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative as a Policy Advisor focused on biodiversity and addressing the unique environmental justice challenges of Indigenous communities in the urban interface.

She has also worked extensively at the international level as an Indigenous Science expert on biodiversity and plastic pollution issues, where she strives to identify and remove barriers to Indigenous engagement in international environmental law. Lynn’s doctoral research, in McGill’s Department of Natural Resource Sciences, is focused on plastic and its disproportionate impacts to Indigenous Peoples at all stages of the plastic lifecycle and elevating Indigenous Science and Indigenous Rights at the international level as vital mechanisms for solving this planetary crisis.