Board of Directors

Carla Funk, Director

A first generation Canadian, Carla was raised by European parents with a reverence for wild natural places. Summers and weekends spent in northern Ontario's Lake of the Woods with her six siblings ensured this love affair would live on. Ojibwe and Cree friends during her youth fostered a strong sense of understanding and respect for First Nations people.

She studied Plant Sciences at the University of Manitoba, and equipped with a Masters in Plant Agronomy and Genetics, she lived and worked abroad for ten years in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Switzerland before settling in Victoria, BC.

She has served as a Director of the Board of World University Service of Canada, is currently a Director of the Board of Canadian Association of Gift Planners (VI Roundtable), and is an advisor to the Board of Directors of Friends of Nemaiah Valley, whose key initiative is supporting the Xeni Gwet'in (Tsilhqot’in) First Nations fight for aboriginal rights and title in the Victoria law courts. Her past four summers have taken her to the spectacular Nemaiah Valley, a place largely unspoiled.

Carla has a passion for the outdoors, travel, reading and photography. She currently holds the position as Director of Development, BC Cancer Foundation, Vancouver Island raising funds for cancer research and improved patient care.

Lynn Hunter, Director

Lynn was elected to Victoria City Council in November 2008. She has lived in Greater Victoria for more than thirty years. She graduated from the University of Victoria and raised her family here. She currently lives in Fairfield.

Her experience includes:

Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands (1988-1993).

• Deputy Environment Critic Islands Served on the federal Parliament’s Constitution Committee on democratic reform, the External Affairs committee to relieve debt in the developing world and the Environment Committee that made recommendations on climate change and global warming.

• Protecting British Columbia’s wild salmon resource as an Aquaculture Specialist and Spokesperson for the David Suzuki Foundation, the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform and the Pacific Northwest Pure Salmon Campaign. (1995-2006)

• Vancouver Island Coordinator for Oxfam Canada (1985-88) Participated in a fact-finding tour of conflict zones in the Sudan and Eritrea.

• Chair, Board of Directors Multiple Sclerosis Society, BC –Yukon Division, Chair of the South Vancouver Island Chapter of the MS Society and Chair of the National Government Relations Committee.
• Member, Board of Directors (1997-2001) Fisheries Renewal British Columbia, a Crown corporation created to help revitalize the province’s fishery and fishery-dependent communities. 
• Member, Board of Directors, (1995-2001) Sierra Legal Defence Fund, now called Eco-Justice, Canada’s leading non-profit environmental law firm. 
• Vice-Chair, Board of Directors (1997-2001) OXFAM Canada – an international development organization

Marilyn Mahan, Director

Marilyn has made Canada her home since 1973. Until then she had lived in the United States. She received a BA in Mathematics at UC Berkeley where she also learned the values of thinking critically, sometimes questioning authority, and always questioning the mass media.
While studying linguistics at McGill University, Marilyn was part of a team investigating the Algonquin language. This experience gave her an appreciation for our First Nations Peoples' respect and love of their land and their ability to live on it without exhausting its resources.

A more recent interest has been the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in developing regions of the world for disseminating information about, e.g., crop prices, agricultural techniques, or migrant worker rights via cell phones, mp3 players and internet kiosks.

For many years, Marilyn worked as an information systems and business consultant, mainly in the areas of finance and health care systems. Now she is looking forward to using business planning and analysis tools in helping RAVEN in its efforts on behalf of Aboriginal peoples in protecting their constitutional rights.

Linda Stanton, Vice-President

Linda has lived on the West Coast all her life and loves the outdoors; hiking, camping, kayaking and organic gardening.

With a Masters in Social Work from UBC, Linda worked as Clinical Director for a not-for-profit agency (NEED Crisis and Information Line) for over 20 years, and believes in the capacity and skills of volunteers and their critical place in the fabric of a caring society. 

Linda has travelled to many places in the developing world and spent time in Guatemala the past two years, where the indigenous Mayan population struggle to maintain their culture and cope with grinding poverty and the aftermath of political oppression. 

She respects the deep connection that indigenous people have to the land and knows that supporting their efforts to preserve their culture and environment is critical for the future of all of us.

David Williams, President

A native British Columbian, David has inherited a profound sense of place from his mixed native and pioneer ancestry. He grew up in small town B.C. and has worked and travelled in many areas of the province in land surveying and as an ardent outdoorsman. He has also homesteaded and raised a family, developing skills as a log house builder and farmer. He has degrees in Anthropology and Library Science and was a library administrator at Simon Fraser University.

David's evolution as an environmentalist and aboriginal rights activist has been fostered by his observation that the native experience in Canada has much to teach us about how to live in this land. The understanding thus brought about will enable us to resist and transform those negative economic and social forces that, left unchecked, will turn “the best place on earth” into an industrial slag heap.