ALICE IRENE WHITTAKER

Alice Irene Whittaker is an author, mother, and environmental communications leader. Her debut book, Homing: A Quest to Care for Myself and the Earth will be published Fall 2024 by Freehand Books. She is the creator and host of Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. Alice Irene has been published in national and international publications, including The Globe & Mail and Permaculture Magazine. She is an interviewee for top-tier media and is a speaker for local, national, and global audiences.

Alice Irene’s research has taken her to ranches, farms, fashion runways, and homes, to engage in conversation with dozens of farmers, builders, scientists, activists, and designers who are living in a way that repairs our relationship with the natural world.  

Alice Irene has been longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize as well as the CBC Poetry Prize, and previously she was shortlisted for the CBC Fiction Awards. She received a Bill and Melinda Gates Innovation Award. In 2021, she received a literary grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.

As an environmental leader, Alice Irene has been Executive Director of Ecology Ottawa, a grassroots environmental advocacy organization, from 2022 until June 2024. Prior to that, she spent four years as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Smart Prosperity Institute and The Natural Step Canada. She played a leadership communications role on national initiatives like Circular Economy Leadership Canada and the Canada Plastics Pact. In her career, she has worked closely with leaders and CEOs in non-profit, gender equality, and environmental organizations, including as Director of Communications and Public Relations at Plan International Canada and Communications Consultant for the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health.  

She was the founder and Executive Director of Mother Nature Partnership, a charity focussed on reusable, environmentally sustainable menstrual supplies for marginalized women and girls in Cameroon and Canada, which has since merged into Femme International. She is a member of Women for Nature, a group of women of influence who drive change for nature, and sits on the Board of Directors of Régénération Canada.

In a previous life, Alice Irene was a professional dancer and contemporary dance choreographer. She toured throughout North America, received a Toronto Arts Council grant for a full-length piece she choreographed about women writers, and performed and choreographed at residencies and theatres in Toronto. 

She is the mother of three beautiful young children, and a keeper of cats, dogs, and chickens. She lives with her family of five in a cabin in the woods in Québec on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land.