Dates (group coaching): 1-hour virtual sessions, starting at 1 PM ET on September 9 & 23, October 7 & 21, November 4 & 18, and December 2.
Dates (1-on-1 coaching): 1-hour virtual session, scheduled at your convenience
Cost: $350 per participant (Zoom Meetings)
Sustainability Network and Raissa Marks bring you an opportunity to join an online leadership coaching program with fellow ENGO leaders in the fall of 2026.
One-on-one leadership coaching is a personalized, thought-provoking partnership between you and your coach that generates insights and clarity for you. It can lead to significant personal and professional growth.
Group coaching blends 1-on-1 coaching with guided discussion and uses the power of the group mind to amplify learning and growth. It involves a small group of individuals who come together as a supportive peer group for a series of sessions facilitated by a professional coach.
The first session will include introductions, program goals and logistics, themes and discussion topics, and group guidelines. Subsequent sessions will involve check-in questions, a group coaching on a specific theme or topic, and reflection questions. Themes/topics will be determined based on participants’ needs. The last session will be focused on reflection, learnings, and next steps.
Participants will also have access to a 1-on-1 coaching session with Raissa.
This program is designed for Executive Directors of small-to-medium-sized environmental ENGOs (those with fewer than 25 employees) in Canada. Ideally, the cohort will be made up of approximately eight individuals from different types of organizations, at different points in their career path, and from different demographic groups (e.g., gender & gender identity, ethnicity, region, etc.). The program will run in English.
(from our previous cohort)
Erica Ellis, Co-Executive Director of Environmental Youth Alliance
"I highly recommend this group coaching program. The combination of accessing high-quality, relevant coaching paired with building relationships and learning from peers was an invaluable experience. Raissa is a fantastic coach who cultivated a wonderfully vulnerable and supportive space to connect, reflect, and grow. It was a consistent highlight in my calendar and has directly supported me in making positive changes in my work."
Sarah McNeil, Executive Director, CPAWS-BC
"Raissa asks questions and encourages reflection in a way that builds trust, not just between coach and client but also across the cohort. Participating in this program helped me challenge assumptions, learn to trust my instincts, and created a cohort of fellow leaders that I know I will learn from and with well beyond the duration of the program."
Interested leaders should email Raissa at raissa@raissamarks.ca now but no later than August 7 to arrange a brief 1-on-1 Zoom chat to ensure a good fit for the program and answer any questions you may have. By mid to late August, those selected for this cohort will be invited to register.
With over 20 years in the non-profit sector, Raissa Marks is a collaborative leader with a passion for fostering healthy communities and empowering the people within them. She is a skilled facilitator with extensive experience leading diverse groups of people through consensus-based decision-making processes. Raissa is an ICF-credentialed coach who helps her clients achieve clarity and realize transformative professional and personal growth. She is a strategic thinker with experience in policy work at both the federal and provincial levels. She currently lives in Montreal.
The DEFNP workshop series will offer tailored programming designed to match ENGOs on their decolonial (un)learning journeys. In Spring 2026 members of the ENGO sector will be able to choose one of three workshop tracks: Introduction to Decolonization in the ENGO Sector, Advanced Decolonial Theory and Application or For Indigenous Ears Only - A Space for Reflection and Action. Each series consists of four three-hour sessions.
Collectively, Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships fosters:
Awareness of settler colonialism and the ways it potentially harnesses civil society;
Understanding about how Canadian law such as the Indian Act and the Income Tax Act has suppressed Indigenous governance systems;
Awareness that Indigenous peoples have unique inherent political and legal systems, with which ENGOs may want to form partnerships;
A better understanding about how to navigate partnerships with Indigenous communities that promote decolonial environmentalism;
A stronger sense about how to identify and explain individual and organization social locations (i.e. positionalities) as part of ethical partnership development;
Promoting the resurgence of Indigenous self-determination in the Canadian ENGO sector.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
70 participants max.
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Settler Colonialism 101
Introduce ENGO representatives to the fact that colonization is a structure and not an event. Identifies key ways that colonialism moves through individuals and organizations.
Session 2: Positionality
ENGO representatives learn how to articulate their social location within a settler colonial state, and in relation to potential Indigenous partners.
Session 3: Inherent Indigenous Governance 101
Introduce the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues. Examples provided.
Session 4: Building Better Relations
ENGO representatives will road test ways they can implement previous workshop key points to re-imagine partnerships with Indigenous nations.
Cost: $100 (Register 2 spots, get the 3rd free)
All registrants will be provided with a link to access the recordings and presentation slides for 60 days following each session.
Session 1: Diagnosing Settler Colonialism in the Enviro Sector
Participants will be asked to share ways in which they have diagnosed and traced power in social justice movements and/or in the ENGO sector. This workshop will make space for discomfort as part of promoting decolonization.
Session 2: Inherent Indigenous Governance
A mix of advanced and introductory theory, this workshop delves into legal and political pluralism, naming the fact that Indigenous nations have their own sources of political authority that they can (and do) draw on when addressing environmental issues.
Session 3: The Nonprofit Industrial Complex
ENGO participants are introduced to theories and examples describing the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the “Shadow State.” Purpose is to show how settler colonialism structures civil society.
Session 4: Decolonizing ENGO-First Nation Partnerships
This workshop delves deep into how ENGOs can partner with Indigenous nations beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex while promoting deference to inherent Indigenous political leaders.
Cost: Free
The Indigenous only space will be collaborative in nature but critical in approach. This track is a space for Indigenous folks within the ENGO sector to come together to discuss their experiences and work, with an eye to taking a position on what the sector might need to do in order to promote decolonization. Participants will use the first session to define our goals for the remaining three meetings. Therefore, session topics named here are proposals only.
Session 1: Naming the Cannibal: Settler Colonialism in the ENGO Sector
Session 2: Proposed topic: Reflections on working in the ENGO Sector
Session 3: Proposed topic: Centering Indigenous Thought in the ENGO Sector
Session 4: Proposed topic: Visioning a Decolonial Environmental Sector
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