The Opportunity
We are seeking a motivated, entrepreneurial, service-oriented, resourceful, independent, and highly skilled Ethnoecologist to support our team on North American projects. This is a full-time opportunity with immediate professional development support and room for future advancement. The successful candidate will bring a diversity of skills leading facilitation and community engagement (including working with Indigenous communities and Elders), techniques for working with qualitative and quantitative data and information and be comfortable operating in cumulative effects settings, managing projects and developing relationships and new project opportunities with existing and prospective clients. Depending on client needs and project scale, the Ethnoecologist will work independently, lead small project teams, and support other senior staff on projects.

The Opportunity
ESSA Technologies Ltd. (ESSA) is an employee-owned Canadian environmental consulting company. We envision a world where creativity, a focus on learning, and systems thinking are the foundation of innovative solutions to environmental challenges. Our corporate mission is to “bring together people, science and analytical tools to sustain healthy ecosystems and human communities”. We achieve this mission by helping clients deal with tough, emerging problems, applying a neutral, thorough evaluation of evidence, encouraging diverse participatory processes, and collaboratively guiding our clients to make informed decisions that are designed to learn over time. Learn more about us at www.essa.com.

At ESSA, we are passionate about what we do and enjoy working with professionals who share our values and mission. At ESSA we value deep curiosity, evidence driven critical thinking, creative innovation, diverse skills, backgrounds, openness to perspectives and care to foster a culture of respect. ESSA’s staff are purpose-driven problem solvers motivated by an aspiration to become trusted advisors to our clients and make a difference in the world.

With offices in British Columbia and Ontario, we acknowledge that our offices are on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish People (the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations) in Vancouver, and the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg People in Ottawa. We acknowledge that we also work within the territories of other Indigenous Nations across Canada and the world.

Your Responsibilities
As an Ethnoecologist at ESSA, you will lead and support others on a suite of projects tailored to your strengths as well as project needs. Within a socio-ecological system context, your role will focus on working with people that have many types of experiences, perspectives, and worldviews and bringing together multiple ways of knowing to inform the development of holistic solutions to environmental challenges. These challenges and their solutions span many areas of expertise, including adaptive management, climate change adaptation, fisheries and aquatic resource management, ecosystem restoration, environmental and cumulative impact assessment, and the development of decision support systems and tools. As part of transdisciplinary project teams, you will have the opportunity to work on diverse and multifaceted problems that provide ample opportunities for learning and growth while helping our Indigenous clients and collaborators to pursue natural resource management on their own terms in ways that uphold their rights, sovereignty, and traditions.

Your day-to-day responsibilities will include:

Project Work:

• • Applying a holistic mindset grounded in the recognition of cumulative effects and systems thinking to the development and undertaking of projects, with an emphasis on the relationships among human and ecological components within socio-ecological systems.
  • Developing respectful relationships with individuals from Indigenous communities, including Elders, who are frequently our collaborators or clients.
  • Working with Indigenous Knowledge holders and supporting the weaving and alignment of Indigenous Knowledge and western scientific information in ways that uphold OCAP principles (including assisting with the negotiation of data-sharing agreements).
  • Planning and facilitating workshops and meetings, including technical workshops as well as community engagement meetings.
  • Designing qualitative data collection approaches, and compiling and analyzing qualitative and quantitative datasets.
  • Understanding the diversity of ESSA expertise that can support client initiatives and developing project workplans to meet the tailored needs of clients. Once acquired, subsequently managing some of these projects.
  • Occasionally travelling to work with clients across North America through short-duration collaborative meetings and workshops. Note – this role does not involve field work.

Client Relationship & Business Development:

• • Contributing to business development efforts including marketing materials and proposal writing, including the co-development of proposals for grant funding with Indigenous clients.
  • Building and maintaining good relationships with our clients and collaborators.
  • Contributing to the development of training materials.
  • Mentoring junior staff to build awareness of and skills in working with Indigenous clients.
  • Archiving, cataloguing, and organizing research for future use by the team.

Education / Experience

• Master’s degree with a preference for degrees in the natural and applied sciences (e.g., Ecology, Biology), and strong preference for degrees in both the natural and social sciences (e.g., Resource Management, Environmental Studies, Geography).
• A minimum of three years of experience working with Indigenous communities in North America.
• Experience working on a range of issues in natural resource management, for instance: (1) aquatic sciences (e.g., water management, fisheries management, marine spatial planning, ecosystem restoration planning); (2) climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessments; (3) data sciences/statistics (e.g., monitoring design, qualitative data analysis, simulation modelling); and/or (4) environmental cumulative effects/impact assessments.

Skills / Abilities
Required skills and experience:

• • Experience supporting Indigenous communities on environmental management challenges and initiatives. Experience working with Indigenous Knowledge holders, and Indigenous Knowledge.
  • Experience working with Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaborations.

Familiarity with Indigenous political and governance contexts in relation to environmental management within Canada.

• Facilitating groups of different sizes and including a diversity of participants, both in-person and virtually (using a variety of tools to support virtual facilitation, such as MS Teams, Zoom, Survey Monkey, Mural, Mentimeter).
• Familiarity working with quantitative and qualitative data, including methodologies for data collection and software systems for data analysis.
• Resourceful, versatile, and collaborative team player with the ability to work calmly and effectively leading in-person and remote teams.
• Proactive and results-oriented, with strong problem-solving and excellent time-management skills; adept at multi-tasking and prioritizing to meet deadlines in a dynamic environment which sometimes requires intensive short-term effort.
• Personable, with a flexible, calm demeanor, comfortable in group settings.
• Excellent technical and plain-language report writing, with exceptional verbal communication skills. Advanced proficiency with document mastery for complex multi-authored reports.
• Computer proficiency and literacy in Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams).

Desirable additional skills and experience:

• Familiarity with Indigenous law.
• Experience working within co-governance and/or co-management arrangements.
• Data manipulation (wrangling) and data visualization (graphing); e.g., using R and/or Excel and other emerging tools.
• Science communication through visual media using software, e.g., Adobe Illustrator, Premiere Pro.
• Fluency in Spanish and/or French.

Applying
We look forward to welcoming the successful candidate to our team. We offer a welcoming, inclusive workplace and commit to working with staff to help them thrive and prosper. Our total rewards program for employees provides competitive compensation, medical benefits, and vacation, plus support for professional development.

Please email a cover letter and résumé to careers@essa.com by November 23, 2022 with “Ethnoecologist” in the subject line. We will review applications and contact selected candidates by November 28, 2022. Interviews will be conducted between December 7-13, 2022. The expected start is January 9, 2023.

All applicants must be eligible to legally work in British Columbia at the time of applying.

Salary range $78,000-$94,000