Meet the WSP Youth Advisory Council

The WSP Youth Advisory Council will share their individual perspectives and explore and provide recommendations as to how CRS can meaningfully promote and improve collaboration, innovation, sustainability, resilience, and equity across the organization and through its participation as a founding organizer of the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI) in cooperation with the Resilience Shift and Resilience First. Council members will work with the CRS Extended Collaboration and Leadership Team and its internal task forces in addition to separate Council meetings. 

“We have a keen focus on improving innovation, collaboration and being a force multiplier for positive change in the communities where we live and work” said Tom Lewis, CRS national business line executive. “These are areas where students and young professionals can provide particularly valuable perspectives, ideas and enthusiasm.”

Let’s meet the Council Members!

Carla Guillaume

Passionate about international cooperation, sustainability, and technology, Carla Guillaume is dedicated to making our global village a better place for future generations. She is currently working as a research assistant for the International Training Program in Development Evaluation where she monitors gender integration, the effectiveness and sustainability of development programs in francophone Africa and Haiti.  

Carla has completed an undergraduate degree in Political Science from Concordia University and is currently pursuing a Master of Public Administration at the École nationale d’administration publique du Québec (ENAP). She has received an Emerging Talent Award from the Bar of Montreal and through her leadership and community involvement, continues to be committed to social issues like environmental justice, inclusion and gender equality. Alongside her academic and professional accomplishments, Carla has represented Canada at the 2020 and 2021 G7 Youth Summit as the Climate and Environment delegate. She is also a fellow of the Black Diplomats Academy and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers hub of Montreal. 

By joining WSP’s Youth Advisory Council, Carla hopes to make young people’s voice heard in developing effective, equitable and green solutions that prioritize well-being and prosperity for all, especially vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. 

Ethan Schwartz

Ethan is a civil engineer by training with a master’s degree in International Relations. He currently works for JCM Power, a Canadian Independent Power Producer that provides clean power to developing economies such as Malawi and Pakistan. Sustainability has been a key focus of his career since his undergraduate degree where he co-led the retrofit of a building to attain LEED gold certification for a capstone project. During his master’s degree, his thesis focused on using decentralized renewable energy to increase access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa.  Ethan has since worked for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) where he created a methodology for measuring the sustainability of urban transportation systems which was subsequently published in a peer-reviewed journal. Ethan has also worked with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) in Seoul, South Korea, where he supported developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region in prioritizing their approach to receiving GCF funding. Ethan has travelled to over 80 countries and consequently incorporates a holistic approach into his work. He is based in Toronto, Canada, but will be temporarily based in Lilongwe, Malawi for parts of 2021.

Favour Onyenma

Favour Onyenma is a Nigerian driven by a passion to solve the systemic energy challenges of emerging African economies. She is currently an MSc student in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Edinburgh where she has garnered technical understanding of renewable energy technologies and their application to improve energy access, security and mitigate climate change. 

With her background in Mechanical engineering, she also has experience in process improvement and strategic planning, and cutting-edge sustainable energy knowledge.  She has strong interests in drawing from all of these to strategically influence the uptake of renewable energy alternatives and implement other innovative solutions, technical and socio-economic, to aid the energy transitions of organizations, Sub-Saharan African countries while also engendering climate resilience on a global scale.

Aside from these, she enjoys helping other like-minded young people understand the role they can play in the future of energy transition and loves to have conversations cutting across sustainable development, innovation and low-carbon economic transition.

João Pedro Araújo Bonfim

João Pedro is an Electrical Engineering student, president and founder of the first chapter of Student Energy in Brazil, and founder – through the Leaders Fellowship program, of the KEJA project, which aims to provide access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity. This project also aims to inform and educate about energy consumption and promote energy justice.

Involved with Student Energy since 2019, he attended the Student Energy Summit in London as a representative of his Chapter and has since been involved with social causes and projects that promote sustainable development.

Tanmay Takle

Tanmay Takle works at the Department of Environment & Climate Change, Government of Maharashtra, where he implements regional climate action initiatives and international partnerships. He is also a student of the MS in Sustainability Management at Columbia University, New York, focusing on climate finance and policy. Previously, he was a Student Energy Leaders Fellow, where he founded the climate solutions research platform Degrees of Change. Tanmay has prior experience in building energy efficiency and holds a bachelor’s degree specialising in renewable energy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Aside from sustainability, Tanmay is passionate about music and plays drums, bass, and tabla.

Toni Dominique Madulid

Toni Dominique Madulid is in the Architecture profession with special interest in the intersection of human-centered design and technology innovation. Tonic, as she is fondly called, has dedicated her research and life work in this personal advocacy of a transdisciplinary approach in tackling technical problems and using the humanitarian lens in finding solutions. More so, she recognizes the urgency of involving youth in coming up with these solutions to ensure continuity and generational impact.

Being a fellow in various global youth innovation programs has led Tonic to organize a network of impact-driven initiatives and mapping out the communities involved within the Southeast Asia region. As the President and Founding Board Member of Reboot Philippines, she leads like-minded youth in enacting the shared advocacy of a just transition to renewable energy in the Philippines. This takes on a grassroots, community-based approach with its methodology heavily relying on inclusive consultation and extensive immersions before relaying proactive recommendations for the potential users to evaluate and hopefully adopt. 

Tonic is currently working on climate-smart research for buildings as well as organizing and capacitating renewable energy advocates in hopes to create a unified voice for youth in the discussion of sustainability in the Philippines.