Hi, my name is Anthony and I am asking for your vote for BC Green Ombuds. To me Ombuds is about much more than investigating complaints. It is about ensuring our organization is living up to our six core principles, treating everyone with compassion in the pursuit of justice, and through this maintaining a high standard of integrity with the public that we’re all here serve.
In my many years as a Green I have witnessed the true power of grass roots democracy, but in recent months I’ve also learned just how fragile that system can be. All of us bring unconscious bias and much of that is learned from trying to survive in a colonial, patriarchal and capitalist society. It is natural that we bring these biases into our work with the party from time to time.
The Ombuds, in my view, exists to assist everyone in navigating these issues of bias when they arise with dignity, respect and empathy for everyone involved. As someone who has developed governance policy in politics and the non-profit sector, and has witnessed how good governance can fail, I hope you will allow me to serve as Ombuds.
ABOUT ANTHONY
Anthony lives on Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh lands in the city of Vancouver, a place he has called home for 12 years. Before moving to Vancouver, Anthony served three years in the Canadian Armed Forces as a communications systems operator and IT systems technician near Fredericton, New Brunswick. He went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree with honours in open source software development at Seneca College at York University.
Following college, Anthony worked for ten years at Mozilla as a software quality engineer on the Firefox web browser, a varied career that led to him to successfully managing quality assurance processes through multiple major shifts in the tech industry. He left Mozilla in 2020 and co-founded a non-profit called Moonlight Institute to support policy research, ethical technology development and communication strategy assisting communities in sustainable, equitable, and just transformation.
Anthony has been a BC Green supporter for nearly a decade, volunteering on campaigns including Jonina Campbell’s by-election in New Westminster where he knocked on thousands of doors. He received the 2017 BC Green Rising Star award in recognition of these efforts. More recently, he managed the 2020 federal leadership campaign for Dr. Amita Kuttner and the 2021 campaign for Dr. Devyani Singh in Vancouver Quadra. Anthony served as the Vancouver Greens Chairperson from 2017 to 2021 working on governance, organizing, stakeholder negotiations and election readiness. He also served as CEO for multiple federal Green Party riding associations from 2015 to 2019 before resigning to step into campaign management.