Donna Chiarelli

Donna Chiarelli brings over 20 years experience helping to build healthy, prosperous and resilient communities. Her consulting work now focuses on strengthening decision making of local governments and the people they work with, related to asset management, environmental sustainability and climate action. She is working on multiple projects with the Municipal Natural Assets Initiative (https://mnai.ca) to support communities across Canada to integrate natural asset management into infrastructure management and decision making. She is the co-author of an asset management practice guideline being developed by Engineers and Geoscientists BC, and she has developed multiple tools and workshops to support learning and progress on asset management.

Prior to consulting, Donna worked for 15 years for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, where she managed and contributed to dynamic teams. As senior advisor for FCM’s Green Municipal Fund (GMF), she led the development of a three-year strategic framework to guide capacity building programming from 2014 -2017. Supporting the implementation of this framework, she led a 2.5 year pilot initiative that combined grant funding with a structured peer learning program to support innovation in (infrastructure) asset management, and helped adapt the initiative to be included in FCM’s Municipalities for Climate Innovation Program, through which it supports municipalities to build climate risks and considerations into their infrastructure planning and decisions.

Previously, Donna coordinated the Canadian component of an international, multi-stakeholder training program for mid-career professionals called Leadership for Environment and Development, delivered through the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Donna is a lifelong advocate of women’s empowerment, global equality and environmental sustainability. She has been privileged to study or work in many countries and has lived briefly in Kenya, India and the UK.