Kim Neale (She/Her) is an Environmental Engineer, of Anishinabek-Métis heritage from her mother's (Peltier) family of the Nipissing First Nation. Kim has spent most of her career in the finance and insurance industry, gaining several professional designations in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reporting, energy management, finance, insurance, and risk management; designing some of Canada's first bespoke financial instruments to advance nature-based climate solutions by successfully negotiating unique binding authority contracts with Lloyd's of London for environmental liability, parametric insurance, and green bonds.
In 2020, Kim left the corporate world to focus on applying her finance and engineering background to accelerate local climate action - starting with creating two local climate change action plans adopted in her home community on Manitoulin Island. Today, Kim works with the national non-profit, Municipal Natural Asset Initiative (MNAI), employing practical strategies to value nature's ability to provide human services. She is currently leading two projects to advance outcomes-based nature financing that will interweave Indigenous knowledge and social outcomes into the financing structure to demonstrate how nature protection/restoration can be sustainably financed and that nature is "worth" more than the mainstream valuations of carbon sequestration and credits. Kim is dedicated to incorporating Indigenous voices, consent, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), biocultural indicators, and data sovereignty into national and international nature valuation protocols to ensure UNDRIP is implemented as intended. She is an active Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership member, contributing to work in the Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) Economics, Infrastructure and Finance, and Biocultural Indicators and Outcomes streams.Kim's home is with her partner Jim and dog Kimchi on Mnidoo Mnising (Great Spirit Island), known to most as Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater island in the world and the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Pottawatomi, and Odawa peoples. Before highways existed, Mnidoo Mnising was an essential trading location and shared place in the Great Lakes for all people of Turtle Island and remains today an important migration route for many endangered species. In her spare time, Kim is focused on creating collaborative partnerships with Indigenous youth on Mnidoo Mnising to advance climate action, IPCA's and food sovereignty.
