LURA Consulting is proud to announce Michelle Dagnino as our firm’s newest partner.

Partners

Liz McHardy, MBA – Partner

Liz specializes in organizational design, training, and collaborative planning – especially in developing community and corporate sustainability plans. Her approach focuses on empowering people to discover, dream, design, and deliver. Liz is a creative and strategic systems-thinker and uses appreciative inquiry methods to establish integrity and trust in process participants. She is a strong and respected integrator, ensuring that community values and ideas are synthesized and embedded into public policy in every project she works on.  Liz, has an MBA from Royal Roads University, and is also an accomplished speaker, trainer and proponent of “Guided Learning”. 

Susan Hall, MES – Partner

Susan is an accomplished sustainability strategist with proficiencies in strategic planning, engagement, and research on environmental and social issues. She is a seasoned environmental professional with over a decade of expertise in systems thinking, ecological conservation, implementation and process design and project leadership. Her expertise is in collaborative planning projects that engage communities in the design, delivery and ultimately ownership of their strategic and sustainability plans. Susan has led dozens of sustainability planning processes over the past decade, including community, corporate and higher education/academic/or institution plans.

James McHardy – CFO & Partner

Jamie is CFO and partner at Lura and has over 13 years of financial and business management experience. He is responsible for the day-to-day and long term financial planning and success of the business. His business philosophy mirrors his personal philosophy and that is to deal with people and finances with integrity and honesty. Jamie is also a registered real estate salesperson practicing in Hamilton and area (jamiemchardy.com). He has an undergraduate degree from King’s College at the University of Western Ontario and has held various board member positions with a number of volunteer and committee groups across the GTHA.

Michelle Dagnino, MA, LLB/JD – Partner

Michelle supports communities to participate in the decision-making processes that affect their futures. She works on complex, multi-stakeholder projects that are closely connected to understanding and serving community needs.  Michelle has two decades of leadership experience in the areas of organizational assessment, facilitation and community engagement. Michelle’s background in private sector legal practice also complements her work for municipalities, government ministries and private sector clients. Michelle has spoken at hundreds of conferences globally as an expert in multi-generational engagement across communities and organizations, and has been the founding program designer of multiple non-profit programs focused on capacity building and enhancing creative thinking amongst youth.

David Dilks, MA – Partner Emeritus

David has been a member of the Lura team for over 25 years, with expertise in designing collaborative processes, process and meeting facilitation, strategic planning, communications, and community-based social marketing. David is a well-known and respected facilitator, working collaboratively with clients, stakeholders and communities to foster constructive conversations that identify needs and priorities and develop innovative solutions and steps for moving forward.  He has worked with government agencies and their stakeholders at all scales – internationally, nationally, province-wide, regionally and municipally to bring people and organizations together to discuss issues and chart a common path forward. 

Senior Consultants and Associates

Jim Faught – Director Emeritus of Community Engagement

Jim is an accomplished professional with proficiency in project management, facilitation processes, community engagement, transportation and land use policy development and strategic planning. Jim has designed and implemented hundreds of community engagement programs throughout Ontario with communities, municipalities and the provincial government. Prior to working at Lura, Jim served as Provincial Stewardship Coordinator for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, where he designed and facilitated multi-stakeholder sessions for the forty community Stewardship Councils across southern and central Ontario. 

James Knott, B.Sc. –Director, Strategy

As an adept project manager, James brings a disciplined and practical approach to the projects he manages and processes he designs. James believes that for projects and initiatives to be truly transformational, communities need to be involved throughout, and he thoughtfully designs processes in such a way as to facilitate meaningful and broad engagement. His specialty lies in managing and coordinating all aspects of engagement and consultation, including the synthesis and reporting of large volumes of public and stakeholder feedback. In addition to his project management skills, James also has a strong understanding of how to design the systems and frameworks necessary to coordinate meaningful progress reporting on the implementation of multi-agency/multi-department plans and strategies.

LURA Team

 Melissa Gallina, MA, – Project Manager

Melissa has experience in sustainability and climate change, community engagement, project management, and research methods. She has been involved in many of LURA’s sustainability-related projects and plans, focusing on topics ranging from energy to transportation. Melissa has recently completed engagement projects related to health, wellbeing and larger social issues such as housing. She is a very strong researcher and writer for community-based plans.  Melissa holds both a B.Sc. in Earth and Environmental Sciences and an M.A. in Geography. While studying at McMaster University, Melissa completed graduate-level courses in both quantitative data analysis and qualitative research methods. She is a peer-reviewed author on two research publications, is trained in NVivo software and is experienced in coding qualitative data.

Joanna Milner -  Business Manager

Joanna has been a member of the LURA team since 2014 and she helps to oversee systems and financial responsibilities of our Hamilton and Toronto offices. She has studied Sociology and Psychology at the University of Ottawa, Nursing at the University of Ottaway, Nursing at Mohawk College (Mohawk-McMaster Institute of Applied Health Sciences) and she has specialized training in Maternal/Newborn Care at George Brown College. She has worked as part of the Infection Prevention and Control team she  also brings over 7 years of experience in Project Management and Implementation, training planning and quality improvement. She provides exceptional services to both our clients and our consultants. She was a member of Sustainable Hamilton Burlington, contributing to the Silver Sustainability Partner Designation that LURA received in 2016.