Meet the BearKind Team
Photo credit: Ani & Tobias Straub
Our Team
The BearKind team brings together people from diverse backgrounds—wildlife experiences, education, community and political engagement, Indigenous knowledge, and business sense. Each member contributes unique strengths that enrich our work and deepen our understanding of the challenges bears face and what we must do to protect them.
Our founder, Ellie Lamb, brings over 30 years of bear guiding and viewing experience, grounding BearKind with firsthand knowledge, respect, and a deep connection to these animals and their lands. Ellie is the guiding light for our team’s shared purpose, inspiring us to protect bears with unwavering dedication.
Together, our team is united by a shared commitment of compassion, coexistence, and protecting the lives of bears so they can live peacefully and flourish.
Ellie Lamb: Founder/Executive Director
Ashley Andersen: Director
Yvonne Gerard: Director
Tina Pashumati James: Director
Gosia Bryja: Scientific Advisor
Trish Boyum: Advisor
Katrin Glenn-Bittner: Contributor
Ellie Lamb – Founder & Executive Director
Ellie Lamb is the Executive Director of BearKind, bringing decades of field experience working around bears in their natural habitat. Her approach is science informed, ethically grounded, and shaped by years of observing individual bears and their social dynamics.
Ellie is known for her intuitive understanding of bear behaviour and her ability to translate that knowledge into practical education for communities, guides, and conservation partners. Her work focuses on deepening public understanding of bears and promoting respectful human–bear interactions.
Ellie leads BearKind with clarity, compassion, and a commitment to sharing meaningful knowledge about the bears who share our landscape.
Ash Andersen – Director
Ash brings a unique blend of financial technology leadership and deep wilderness experience to his role as a Director with Ellie’s BearKind Society. Over his career, he has guided organizations through complex digital transformation, helping them build systems that are ethical, resilient, and designed for long term impact. That strategic mindset now supports BearKind governance, growth, and commitment to transparent, community driven conservation.
Ash’s connection to the natural world runs far deeper than professional interest. He has spent extensive time in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest and the Yukon Territory, travelling through landscapes where wildlife, culture, and ecology are inseparable. These experiences shaped his belief that protecting wild spaces is not optional—it is a responsibility owed to future generations.
His passion centers on safeguarding parks, wildlife corridors, and the ecological integrity that defines Canada’s North. Ash believes conservation succeeds when people of all ages feel empowered to participate, learn, and lead.
Joining Ellie’s BearKind Society is both an honour and a natural extension of his values. Ash is excited to support BearKind’s vision, help strengthen the organization’s reach, and continue to inspire communities to build a kinder, more respectful relationship with the natural world.
Yvonne Gerard – Director
Yvonne’s relationship with bears began on the North Shore, where she found herself sharing space with these beautiful animals—first with fear and trepidation, then with growing curiosity, and eventually with a deep, sense of connection. With guidance from experienced members of the bear community, she began to understand their personalities, their challenges, and the quiet intelligence behind their behaviour. What started as apprehension evolved into a deep respect, compassion, and a commitment to stand up for and protect these often misunderstood and mistreated bears.
Today, Yvonne dedicates her time to the ethical and compassionate treatment and protection of bears. As a liaison between the public and government, she uses her voice on behalf of the many British Columbians who want to live safely and respectfully alongside the bears in their neighbourhoods—listening when people speak and carrying their concerns into conversations with officials—working tirelessly to protect the very bears community members have watched grow up, grown attached to, and even affectionately named.
Along with the BearKind team—and as a dedicated voice for the bears—Yvonne hopes to reshape how communities and the BC government treat and value these remarkable animals, replacing fear with empathy, respect, and understanding.
Tina Pashumati James – Director
Tina has been working passionately on bear conservation initiatives in Whistler, BC, standing alongside her local community to protect the bears who share this land. She dedicates herself to raising awareness about their needs, encouraging coexistence, and helping people understand how deeply our actions shape the lives of these animals.
Her commitment to protecting all animals began when she was just fourteen years old. It has guided her life ever since. For Tina, working with like minded people is essential—people who believe in clear, compassionate education and who understand that meaningful bear conservation depends on collective effort. When communities come together, real change becomes possible.
“Be kind, be kind, be kind.”
– Henry James
Gosia Bryja – Scientific Advisor
Gosia Bryja is a conservation scientist, educator, and writer. She holds a PhD in environmental science and has more than twenty years of experience working on wildlife conservation projects across North and South America, Africa, and Asia.
She still remembers the first time a bear met her gaze – unhurried and calm, with no fear, only quiet recognition. The animal before her was not simply part of nature, but a being with her own presence, part of the intricate web that connects all life.
Years spent observing animals in the wild gradually deepened this understanding and shaped her appreciation for the complexity and intelligence woven through the living world.
Through both field experience and scientific research, she came to see that animals are not anonymous members of populations but individuals with distinct personalities, relationships, and ways of knowing their environment. Bears have taught her things she could not have learned in any other way, and they remain at the center of her heart and her work.
Gosia believes that conservation cannot succeed on data alone. It requires bridging science with ethics and compassion, and confronting how fear, language, and narratives shape the way we perceive bears and ultimately determine their fate.
As Scientific Advisor to BearKind, she contributes research, analysis, and a deep commitment to the organization’s mission of protecting bears and fostering compassionate coexistence.
Trish Boyum – Advisor
While practicing social work decades ago gave Trish insights into human behavior, observing and photographing Grizzly bears, Black bears and Spirit bears during the past 30+ years, have taught her just how behaviourally similar, bears and humans are. For example, when treated with contempt and unkindness both humans and bears can behave unpredictably and when treated with respect and kindness, both flourish, all providing some of life’s greatest lessons on how our actions can negatively or positively affect change.
Amidst the soul stirring land and seascapes of the Great Bear Rainforest, it is the trust of the bears that Trish finds most inspiring. While photographers may generally agree that “good light is what makes the best photo”, Trish believes that her best photos come from trust, respect and being open to the lessons that the bears share.
When immersed in nature, camera in hand, Trish is still surprised by how quickly thoughts of life’s challenges are replaced with the calm and healing that this connectivity with the bears and their shared, natural world brings her.
Katrin Glenn-Bittner – Contributor
Katrin Glenn-Bittner, a farmer and mother from Texada Island, B.C. has risen as a powerful voice for wildlife driven by unshakable belief that coexistence with nature begins with knowledge, understanding and compassion.
When a young Grizzly Bear swam to Texada Island and the fear-based narratives spread like Wildfires, Katrin chose to stand up and speak for a life that could not speak for himself. Together with her brother, biologist Dr. David Bittner they named the young grizzly Tex and refused to look away when the kill order was issued. Instead, they chose to fight for solutions, standing up for a misunderstood magnificent bear who deserved the chance to live. Through Tex she saw how broken the system is, and how fear and control dominate, while compassion is treated as weakness.
Putting her own personal needs aside, she dedicated her voice, energy, and time to protecting a bear she knows represents something far greater than one animal.
As a farmer who loves bears, she embodies what many see as a contradiction, yet she calls balance and true respect for Mother Earth.
Katrin believes that fear never protects, it only projects, and when left unchecked twist the truth into cruelty. Her experience with bears has taught her that these powerful animals are patient teachers who reflect our own relationship with the wild and ourselves. She wants to remind people that when we treat animals with the respect we wish for ourselves, a mutually respectful coexistence is possible.
Through relentless persistence and unwavering hope, Katrin’s story proves that a single courageous voice can confront fear, awaken compassion, and ignite growth through knowledge and remind others that doing what is right is rarely the easiest path.
This path has led her to most beautiful and extraordinary people in her life she could have ever imagined. People who appeared like light along the way reminding her that courage and compassion never walks alone, it connects.
