News Release

For Immediate Release: October 26, 2015

Environmental activist Tzeporah Berman to speak at Mount Allison, Nov. 4

Co-founder of PowerUp Canada part of the University’s President’s Speakers Series

SACKVILLE, NB — Mount Allison University will welcome Tzeporah Berman as part of the President’s Speakers Series celebrating the Year of the Environment on campus. Berman’s talk, This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge, based on her recent book of the same title, will take place on Wednesday, November 4, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. in Brunton Auditorium (Marjorie Young Bell Music Conservatory). Everyone is welcome.

Tzeporah Berman has been designing and winning environmental campaigns in Canada and internationally for 20 years. She currently works as a strategic advisor for dozens of environmental organizations, First Nations and philanthropic advisors on clean energy, oilsands and pipelines. The former co-director of Greenpeace International’s global climate and energy program, executive director and co-founder of PowerUp Canada and co-founder and campaign director of ForestEthics, Berman was appointed by the Premier of British Columbia to the Green Energy Task Force in 2009 to design recommendations for the development of renewable energy in the region.

“Tzeporah Berman is one of the best known environmental activists in this country,” says Mount Allison University President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Robert Campbell. “We are delighted to welcome her to campus as part of our President’s Speakers Series celebrating the Year of the Environment.”

Named ‘Canada’s Queen of Green’ by Readers’ Digest, Berman was one of the experts in Leonardo Di Caprio’s environmental documentary 11th Hour, and was one of six Canadian nominees for the Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She has been profiled as one of 50 Visionaries Changing the World in Utne Reader and was honoured by inclusion into the BC Royal Museum permanent exhibit of one of 150 people who have changed the face of British Columbia.

Berman is known for her work as the coordinator of one of the largest civil disobedience in Canada’s history, the logging blockades in Clayoquot Sound. One of the creators and lead negotiators of the Great Bear Rainforest campaign as well as the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement, her work has contributed to the protection of over 40 million hectares of old growth forests. More recently Berman helped to design Greenpeace International’s Arctic campaign and the Clean Our Cloud campaign that led to Apple and Facebook becoming international leaders in using renewable energy for their data centers.

Berman’s Mount Allison lecture is sponsored by the Josiah Wood Lecture Fund.

2015-16 Year of the Environment at Mount Allison University

One of the pillars in Mount Allison University’s Strategic Statement, the Year of the Environment will encourage the campus and wider community to explore issues relating to their surroundings through several lenses — scientific, societal, cultural, and humanitarian on a local, national, and international scale.

The Year of the Environment will see several noted speakers, activists, and artists visit campus through the annual President’s Speakers Series as well as other related activities and events such as University Commencement, welcoming new students to Mount Allison, and the Mansbridge Summit, which brings the Chancellor to campus for a day of academic discussion, debate, and learning around a central theme.