Erin Light is passionate about belonging, social justice, reconciliation, and equity, and her career of varied experience in diverse leadership roles demonstrates her commitment to service and to community. She believes in progressive, trauma-informed, and relationship-driven leadership, supporting her teams with empathy, and aiming to always meet people where they are, holding space for them to thrive. 

A Cultural Anthropologist by training, she holds a master’s degree with a particular focus in Engaged Anthropology – making anthropological scholarship accessible for all to support social justice, with her research focused on the historical (and ongoing) erasure of Indigenous identity in Newfoundland. 

With varied experience in senior leadership roles, each in service of underrepresented and marginalized communities, Erin currently works as an independent consultant to non-profit and social enterprise clients, specializing in strategic and operational planning, project management, community building and engagement, and fund development. While her services are varied, she approaches all her work from a strengths-based, trauma-informed, human-centred perspective, prioritizing the voices of the communities she serves, and setting aside the constraints of inauthentic professional relationships to build authentic, human connections based on honesty, vulnerability, trust, and shared reflection, learning, and meaning-making.

Most recently, Erin has been working with Violence Prevention Labrador to conduct a large-scale community needs assessment of Carers (defined broadly) throughout Labrador - a project that will inform the strategic direction of Violence Prevention Labrador going forward. She also recently served as the founding Director of Strategic Initiatives and Funding for UNF Avalon - the Newfoundland branch of one of Canada’s oldest non-profit organizations, Ukrainian National Federation. Through this work she was working to reduce barriers for Ukrainian refugees and build cultural infrastructure in Newfoundland and Labrador for Canada’s newest and fastest-growing Ukrainian refugee population. She guided the organization’s strategic direction and built relationships with external partners, all to support capacity development within the newcomer population, but also building the capacity of the existing local population in NL to provide an inclusive and supportive home for newcomers. As a completely new branch of the organization, Erin was brought on specifically to help build the organizational foundation, which included developing the strategic direction of the branch, program design, overseeing the largest community needs assessment of Ukrainians in Newfoundland to date, building HR infrastructure and hiring, policy and proposal development, strategic communications, and making cases for support and applying for funding from various sources. Erin’s initial proposal for core funding for the first year of operations from the Province was not only successful but was counter-offered with an unprecedented three years of core funding.

From 2017 to 2023, Erin had the absolute pleasure of doing reconciliatory work in the North as a Project Manager and then Director of Operations for Aurelia - a reconciliation-focused organization that works for and with Indigenous communities, governments, and organizations to build the internal capacity for the delivery of human services. She worked to provide trauma-informed community engagement and strategic communications, program development and delivery, and policy development, as well as manage capacity development projects, working collaboratively with Indigenous partners to help support their vision for their own human services.

She holds a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from York University, and takes a participatory approach to project planning, believing that projects (and teams) are more successfully led and more meaningful to those involved when stakeholders contribute their voices, feel heard, and are invited to shape their own narratives. Erin has served on multiple non-profit Boards including, currently, the Board of the Independent, NL,  the premiere outlet for progressive ideas and dialogue in Newfoundland and Labrador, and has worked as a volunteer on the End Sexual Violence NL (then, NLSACPC) Crisis and Support Line, as well as Fundraising Task Force leader for MUN Oxfam (“Ending global poverty begins with women’s rights”), among various other volunteer pursuits in social justice and the arts.