Staff

Erica Ellis (she/her), Mentorship Program Manager

Erica is a settler of Japanese and mixed European descent who humbly resides on the unsurrendered land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh First Nation.

She grew up playing in nature, got into climbing as a teenager, and fumbled through learning how to ski as an adult. She’d describe herself as extremely average at many sports. For her, it’s all about being out on the land, sharing experiences with community, and learning about the places she’s privileged to explore. When she’s not in the backcountry, you can find her in her garden, cooking Japanese food, riding her bike, or chasing her dog Valley.

Erica’s work sits at the intersection of Environmental Justice & Social Justice; whether it’s in her role as Co-Executive Director at Environmental Youth Alliance, as a facilitator with Incluskivity, or completing her Masters in Education for Sustainability. Decreasing barriers to land-based activities for equity-deserving communities is what it’s all about for Erica. She’s thrilled to be continuing this work with the Mountain Mentors team as the Mentorship Program Manager.

Erica can be reached at programs@mountainmentors.com

Board of Directors

Rain Scott (They/He), President

Rain was born on the East Coast of the United States and moved to Canada in 2006. They did not grow up spending time outdoors, but slowly grew to love it in their new home.

Rain loves climbing, mountaineering, running and ski touring. They love adventures that are long, remote and off the beaten track.

Rain started with Mountain Mentors as a climbing mentor in 2021 and has been both a mentor and mentee a few times since then.

Rain is queer and trans masculine white Settler. They believe everyone belongs outside and everyone deserves community.

Rain can be reached at president@mountainmentors.org.

Katie Mingay (She/her), Vice-President

Born and raised on the East Coast of the US, Katie found big mountains later in life. It wasn't until a semester abroad in Cape Town during college that she found one of her life passions in hiking and has never looked back. Katie moved out west in 2022 and is privileged to live as an uninvited guest on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Spending time in nature brings so much joy, peace, and community into Katie’s life. Whether it is a walk in the forest with her puppy and husband, or something more adventurous that ignites flow – like rock climbing or trail running – the mountains are her happy place. And while she believes nature can be such a powerful tool for individual and collective wellbeing, she also knows that so many do not have the same access and opportunity to it. Katie is positioned in this work as someone who is deeply committed to working towards a more just and equitable world and believes community is a key ingredient to progress.

Katie is a social impact professional with experience working with brands, nonprofits, social enterprises, and governments. She is excited to bring her love of community and the outdoors along with her skills in strategy development, partnerships, and program design to Mountain Mentors as the Alumni and Community Director.

Katie can be reached at admin@mountainmentors.org

hailey findlay (she/her), secretary

Hailey grew up in Toronto on Treaty 13 territory, the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. She moved to British Columbia in search of snow and hasn’t looked back. What started as a ski season turned into a lifelong love for the mountains and the people in them. She has lived across the province, spending most of her time in the Sea to Sky, and now calls Vancouver home, where she recreates and works on the traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəyəm (Musqueam), Sḵwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

As a bisexual woman, Hailey is passionate about building inclusive outdoor spaces where everyone feels welcome. Highly snack-motivated and fuelled by giggles and stoke, she feels most herself when she’s outside with friends, whether ski touring, trail running, climbing, or tagging along on whatever adventure comes her way. She’s a “yes” person through and through.

Hailey first joined Mountain Mentors nearly a decade ago as a mentee and later returned as a mentor. That experience sparked her lasting passion for community. Since then, she has worked across both non-profit and for-profit organizations, bringing with her a wide range of experience in partnership building, community engagement, and organizational development. She is excited to support Mountain Mentors in continuing to grow its impact and create spaces for connection, confidence, and belonging in the outdoors.

Hailey can be reached at admin@mountainmentors.org

JoJo Das (he/him), Program Development Director

Born in Kolkata, India, JoJo has since hopped and skipped his way through his home country, Canada, Indonesia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. He had never considered himself an outdoors oriented person until he moved to Vancouver in 2013. On the ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, JoJo developed a strong love and passion for rock climbing.

His own experiences of being mentored in outdoor environments left a profound impression. Since his first foray onto BC granite, JoJo has been struck by the opportunity and challenges that these spaces bring. Now a firm believer that walls are meant for climbing, instead of keeping people apart, JoJo is energized by his role with Mountain Mentors as a place to create spaces where people feel welcomed, supported, and equipped to learn and shape their own experiences.

JoJo is crafting his outdoors-focussed career, from working at UBC, Mountain Mentors, VIMFF, and is currently building his own non-profit organization called SOARE, helping it become a thriving business accelerator for recreation technology. Residing in East Vancouver, JoJo spends his time training his dog to do things you thought a dog could never do, and planning the next adventure into the vertical.

JoJo can be reached at programs@mountainmentors.org.

Cassandra Mah (she/her), Director of Community Development & Partnerships

Cassandra is a settler of Chinese and mixed European descent, grateful to have grown up on the unceded homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh Nations in East Vancouver.

Her love for mountains began with Grouse Mountain’s $50 child season pass, where she quickly came to eat, sleep and breathe skiing. Cassandra has coached alpine ski racing and adaptive skiing for teams across BC and her time spent on the hill led her to slowly venture into the backcountry, later learning from and volunteering with organisations such as Mountain Mentors and the Alpine Club of Canada. For Cassandra, the perfect trip pulls together a trustworthy team, and draws on multiple skills, and leaves you be both challenged and empowered by the experience. She is motivated to pay forward the generosity she has witnessed by contributing to initiatives that improve equity and strengthen long-term community capacity.

Between backcountry trips, Cassandra can be found in a bike lane or working in public policy to better align social, environmental, and economic priorities for sustainable, healthy futures.

You can reach Cassandra at community@mountainmentors.org.

Carlene Van Alphen (She/Her), Fundraising Director

Carlene has been a member of the mountain mentors community and living in the Sea to Sky since 2021.  She enjoys human powered, two feet and a heartbeat style adventures on her skis and SUP. She lets her imagination lead. She believes the outdoors are for everyone to enjoy, a place where everyone belongs. Though often travelling solo, she has experienced tremendous personal growth, and impact through mentorship. Carlene has experience working with social enterprises, non-profit organizations, and for profit corporations. She seeks to leverage her skills in partnership management, business development, revenue generation and fundraising to reduce financial barriers to participation and improve access to the outdoors for the Mountain Mentors community. 

Carlene can be reached at fundraising@mountainmentors.org

Meryn Corkery (she/her), Director At Large

Meryn is an uninvited settler on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Territory, where she has resided for the last seven years. A childhood spent running through Treaty 6 territory, in the Edmonton/Amiskwaciwâskahikan river valley and hiking in the Rocky Mountains instilled a great love of the outdoors in her. This love of the outdoors, coupled with the desire to build a more sustainable and just food system, brought Meryn to the University of British Columbia, where she received a BSc. in Global Resource Systems. 

Meryn loves to trail run, hike, gravel ride, cross country ski and climb. Meryn joined the Mountain Mentors program as a mentee to gain more confidence transitioning from indoor to outdoor climbing. She believes that the outdoors should be accessible to and inclusive of everyone, and due to many different systems (patriarchy, racism, ableism, white supremacy and more), it currently is not. Meryn is committed to naming and working to dismantle these systems in order to increase access to the outdoors. While many solutions are needed, she sees mentorship as a key way to foster community among groups that are currently under-represented in the outdoors and support skill-sharing and capacity building.

Meryn can be reached at community@mountainmentors.org.

Janelle Salm, (she/her) Treasurer on the Board of director

Growing up in Saskatchewan, Janelle’s idea of "altitude training" was walking up the local toboggan hill – until family trips to the Alberta Rockies introduced her to actual mountains and the joy of snowboarding. Driven by a desire for bigger peaks, she moved to Vancouver over a decade ago, and is so grateful to still have the opportunity to work and live on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. When she isn’t snowboarding, hiking, or rock climbing, Janelle works in sustainability, applying her CPA financial reporting background to environmental information.through

In the early days of moving to Vancouver, it was through rock climbing that she found like-minded people, experiencing firsthand the life-changing power of outdoor communities that welcome you exactly as you are. She firmly believes that everyone deserves to find belonging in the outdoors, and that you don’t have to be "great" at a sport to still deeply enjoy it. As Treasurer, Janelle is excited to apply her financial background to support Mountain Mentors in building inclusive, accessible spaces where everyone can feel empowered to explore all that nature has to offer.

Becky Hill, (she/her) Communications Director

Becky is an artist, illustrator, and community builder. Originally from England, she moved to Canada 10 years ago for “just one ski season” and never left, quickly falling in love with the land and outdoor lifestyle.  After a few years living in the Rockies on the traditional Treaty 7 Territory, Becky now lives and recreates on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations in Vancouver. 

She spends most weekends in the mountains, split between hiking, camping, cold dipping, and snowboarding/skiing through winter. Her curiosity for winter terrain has taken her from resort riding into snowshoe travel, and eventually into backcountry skiing. She joined Mountain Mentors as a mentee to continue building skills and confidence in snowy terrain, inspired by overnight winter hut trips and making hiking a year-round activity.

Passionate about using creativity as a force for connection and change, Becky is a multidisciplinary artist who works with outdoor and environmental organizations that share her commitment to protecting and celebrating the natural world. She is also the founder of Drawn Outdoors, a nature-based art club that helps people slow down, connect with the outdoors, and build community through creativity. Her work with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Ecotrust Canada supporting Indigenous and community-based programs continues to influence her relationship to the land and the way she approaches collaboration and engagement.

Becky can be reached at media@mountainmentors.org

volunteer operational staff

kathryn trnavsky, strategic planning advisor
TATENDA Gurure, Newsletter editor
Tuti Aniyi, Social Media Manager

Community architects

Since its inception, Mountain Mentors has been a space that has hosted the passion, expertise, care, creativity, and commitment of so many incredible individuals. Each of them has contributed to a blueprint of what is possible as we work to create backcountry* spaces where everyone belongs and feels safe. For that, we are endlessly grateful.

The qualities and strengths of the Mountain Mentors community can be measured by the contributions of the individuals listed below.

(Listed alphabetically)

Anitra Paris

Brendon Dawson

Brett Trainor

Colleen Ellison

Mentorship Program Manager, 2018 - 2019

FIONA SCRIVENS

Mentorship Program Manager, 2023 - 2025

Julia Chen

JoJo Das

Vice President and Secretary, 2023 - 2025

Monika Tesiorowski

Compliance Director, 2023-2026

Rosie Langford

Secretary, 2020 - 2022

Banner photo at top by Danielle Campani