The expert instructors and coaches in the Centre for Counselling & Community Safety provide practical training for those working in counselling and community safety roles. Our Counselling faculty teach professionals how to support and empower clients, including children, youth, adults, families and communities, affected by traumatic events in their lives. Our Community Safety faculty teach professionals how to promote and enforce regulations around health, safety, and well-being for individuals and communities, and provide practical training for those working in care facilities and other community safety roles.
Alana Abramson (PhD in criminology) has more than 20 years of experience working in the areas of restorative justice, violence- prevention, and conflict resolution, in justice, community, and school settings. She has assisted in developing various initiatives involving elders, at-risk adults, people with disabilities, Indigenous communities, youth, former prisoners, and victims and survivors. Abramson is a passionate educator and lifelong learner who studies and practicses transformative approaches to education.
Bruce Cairnie is a registered counsellor, trauma responder and coach for personal resilience and stress management. In a world filled with many stressors, he supports people in attending to their personal resilience and stress management, assisting them to thrive in the midst of it all. He has worked in those capacities and in crisis response in different settings such as corrections, industry, healthcare, education, and business.
Cairnie leads the critical incident stress management program (CISM) for Fraser Health. He has also provided CISM support in education, corrections, industry, business, and religious settings. Having completed the JIBC CISM certificate in 2010 he is now thrilled to assist others in acquiring these skills to support people experiencing crisis.
Jann Derrick, PhD, is a Registered Family Therapist, Supervisor Mentor in the Canadian Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and a member of the Canadian Psychological Association. She trained first as a teacher then as a counselling psychologist with a specialty in relationship and family therapy. She has been in practice for 40 years and has taught across Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. Derrick is of Irish, English and Haudensaunee/Mohawk heritage. Her passion is the healing of Indigenous families and sharing knowledge of Indigenous family systems. She did pioneering therapy work with residential school survivors in the 1980s and was part of the first residential school court case in Canada. She has provided clinical supervision at culturally-based treatment centres and in the pioneering Aboriginal Trauma Recovery Program. In 1998 she facilitated a national Aboriginal focus group that created a code of ethics for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Her published work has included papers on The Box and the Circle and Aboriginal Family Systems, and Kahwà:tsire: Indigenous Families in a Family Therapy Practice with the Indigenous Worldview as the Foundation, which was published online in 2017. Derrick has served as a director on the Board of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She served with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, and worked with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Commission, as well as the B.C. Ministry of Children and Family Development. She was awarded the John Banmen Award for Outstanding Contribution to Family Therapy in B.C. in 2003.
Glen Grigg, PhD., is a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Approved Clinical Supervisor . Grigg’s doctorate (Walden, 2008) is in clinical and counselling psychology and his master’s degree (UBC, 1993) includes specializations in family and career counselling. Grigg is adjunct professor of counselling psychology at the University of British Columbia where he teaches family therapy, group psychotherapy, and professional ethics, while also serving as an adjunct at Adler University. His clinical practice is with Jericho Counselling, and he also provides mental health consultation, conducts outcome and efficacy research for health authorities, and offers clinical supervision across a range of mental health professions. His home life includes gardens, guitars, grandchildren, and mountain bikes.
Aaron Hilgerdenaar has a rich and diverse background in bylaw enforcement, community support, corrections, and forensic services. He currently serves as Manager of Bylaw Enforcement, Business Licensing & Animal Services for the City of Coquitlam. Throughout his extensive career, Hilgerdenaar has been deeply immersed in virtually every aspect of bylaw enforcement. He also serves as a sessional instructor of bylaw enforcement at JIBC. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Simon Fraser University, and an Investigations and Enforcement Skills Certificate from the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC).
Darrin Hotte (BA, MDiv, Cert. ConRes., FMC Cert. CFM, RRM, FEA) has over 35 years of experience and specialized training in the areas of conflict, leadership, complex family systems, and relationships. He is passionate about building, restoring, and preserving health within families, communities, faith-based groups and other organizations. The focus of his mediation practice is separation/divorce, family business, and speaking/training, and has mediated, facilitated, or coached in over 800 family and civil disputes. Engaging learners on the topics of de-escalation, conflict and negotiation at places like the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) and the Simon Fraser University Beedie School of Business , he is a sought-after trainer and public speaker. Hotte holds a certificate in Family Mediation (JIBC), a Bachelor of Arts in psychology/sociology (Concordia College), and an MDiv (Regent College), and is a Certified Family Enterprise Advisor (Institute of Family Enterprise Advisors). He is married with two children, is an occasional jazz drummer and is an active firefighter with Lions Bay Fire Rescue.
Marla McLellan holds a Master of Arts in counselling Psychology and a PhD in Education. She worked in the public school system as a teacher and counsellor for 34 years. McLellan has a private counselling practice, www.walkandtalk.ca, where she incorporates movement, mindful awareness, and critical reflection to help clients connect with their inner healing intelligence as they work toward their definition of recovery. As well as being an instructor at JIBC, she is a faculty associate and clinical supervisor in the Master of Counselling programs at City University of Canada.
Kerry Palmer is a Metis citizen from the Red River Valley of Manitoba and for more than two decades has operated his consulting business, Integrative Mediation Services. His focus is in the areas of conflict resolution, mediation, facilitation, training, workplace improvement processes, team support, and executive coaching. Palmer has been a faculty member at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC) for more than 20 years, currently as an instructor in the Centre for Conflict Resolution, and for a time in the Aboriginal Leadership program. His work has taken him to First Nations communities and organizations where he has provided training, facilitation, circle work, and mediation services to chief and council, band offices, employees, and community members. Palmer has worked as a mediator in the areas of child protection and family mediation and currently serves as a mediator/coach for the BC Public Service Agency, as well as a respected workplace advisor for several provincial Crown corporations in B.C. He holds certificates in Conflict Resolution, Family Mediation, and a specialization in Restorative Practices from JIBC, as well as a diploma from Vancouver Community College in adult education.
Laurie Pearce is a practitioner, educator and researcher in the disaster management community. She teaches in the area of emergency management and critical incident stress management at the Justice Institute of British Columbia (JIBC), as well as the Master of Disaster and Emergency Management at Royal Roads University. In addition, she provides consultation services for various federal and provincial government organizations and currently provides services for the Psychosocial Services for Emergency Response Team (PSERT) for Health Canada. She was the Research Chair at JIBC, managing the SIMTEC project which focused on developing identifying stressors in Emergency Operations Centres for first responders, and others, and developing strategies to support them. Pearce's current research is focused on the impacts of disasters on evacuated households, particularly those impacting Indigenous communities, the amphibious retrofitting of homes, and continued work on the psychosocial impacts of disasters on first responders.
She is an active volunteer with the Disaster Psychosocial Services Program in B.C., has served on Canada’s National Advisory Committee for Disaster Risk Reduction, and sat on its National Disaster Resilience and Security Advisory Table related to Canada’s adaptation to climate change. She holds a PhD, a Master of Arts from the School of Community and Regional Planning, and a Master of Social Work, as well as undergraduate studies in sociology and psychology, all from the University of British Columbia. She is a Registered Social Worker with the BC College of Social Workers, and a member of the BC Association of Social Workers, the Canadian Risk and Hazards Network, and the BC Association of Emergency Managers.
Nancy Poole, PhD, LLD (Hon.) is dedicated to motivating, connecting and creating new ways of learning and doing. As an educator, she has co-led system change initiatives, and co-developed toolkits, training curricula and guidelines on trauma-informed practice with agencies and governments across Canada, and brings this expertise to teaching courses on trauma-informed approaches for JIBC. As a researcher, she leads a virtual research and knowledge exchange centre dedicated to work that informs policy and service provision on girls’ and women’s health, and promotes gender equity. As a networker, she facilitates virtual collaborations and online communities of inquiry, that support creative thinking on complex issues such as the interconnections between substance use problems and trauma and intimate partner violence. Poole has been a member of research teams such as the Honouring Our Strengths: Culture as Intervention team, studying Indigenous approaches to healing from substance use concerns and has a strong commitment to working with Indigenous partners to incorporate strengths-based and Indigenous wellness approaches in all teaching, learning, and research.