Freydis Welland

Freydis values the importance of compassionate heart-felt reflection and action in creating resilient individuals, organizations, families and communities. Always active in building partnerships, Freydis has participated in many organizational start-ups, and founding committees and working groups including the Bright Light Foundation, now the Hawn Foundation, the BC new media industry organization now known as DigiBC: Digital + Wireless Industries, the Quality Council of British Columbia, and the Greater Vancouver Compassion Network.

She has a diversity of experience as an adjunct to her corporate career at BCTEL and TELUS serving on the Canada-BC Community Access Board, the Canada-BC Treaty Negotiation Advisory Committee, the Business Council of BC, the Parliament, Business and Labour Trust, and as a director of Canada Place Corporation, the Pacific Association for Continuing Education, and as an advisory board member of Telefilm Canada’s New Media Fund and Main Dance. She is editor of several books published by The British Library, Frances Lincoln, and the University of Chicago Press.

She is a co-organizer of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s visits to Vancouver in 2004, 2006 and 2009, and SFU’s multi-year series of Imagine BC dialogues, as well as subsequent dialogues offered by the Dalai Lama Center on the neuroscience and value to individuals and society of balancing education of the mind with education of the heart.