Executive Director
Andrea Carey
Andrea Carey is a Canadian Certified Inclusion Professional, holds a Masters of Education in Leadership Studies, is a Certified Executive Coach. Andrea is the Chief Inclusion Officer for INclusion INcorporated and the Executive Director for OneAbility. Andrea has been working on diversity and inclusion projects at the local, provincial, national and international level for the past 15 years, leading the development of many leading resources, trainings and programs that were co-created with, and developed to support equity deserving groups. Andrea spent ten years on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, and chaired the organization’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee and the Paralympic Pathways Committee. Andrea is currently a Board Director with KidSport Victoria and with Power to Be Adventure Therapy Society.
The Board of Directors
Board Member
Alfiya Battalova – Langford, BC
Alfiya Battalova (she/her) is a faculty member in the School of Humanitarian Studies at Royal Roads University. Her research focuses on disability policy, community engagement, experiences of people with disabilities in educational, health, and other settings. She brings 10+ of experience working in the disability non-profit sector, specifically program development, strategic planning, and program evaluation. Alfiya's lived experience as a disabled woman informs her professional work and her passion for adaptive recreation and advocacy for system-level changes.
Board Member
Tanelle Bolt – Langford, BC
Tanelle is a barrier free design and recreation consultant, educated interior designer and founder of RAD Recreation Adapted Society – better known as RAD Society, whose mission is to break down barriers to participation in recreation by providing short term rentals (try-it-before-you-buy-it) of the expensive gear that people living with mobility challenges require to play their way. Tanelle has been educating individuals, businesses/organizations and municipalities on the importance of inclusion in both indoor and outdoor settings through media interactions, consulting, keynote speaking and conferences since sustaining a paralyzing spinal cord injury from a recreation accident in 2014.
Board Member
Carrina Kenigsberg – Victoria, BC
Tanelle is a barrier free design and recreation consultant, educated interior designer and founder of RAD Recreation Adapted Society – better known as RAD Society, whose mission is to break down barriers to participation in recreation by providing short term rentals (try-it-before-you-buy-it) of the expensive gear that people living with mobility challenges require to play their way. Tanelle has been educating individuals, businesses/organizations and municipalities on the importance of inclusion in both indoor and outdoor settings through media interactions, consulting, keynote speaking and conferences since sustaining a paralyzing spinal cord injury from a recreation accident in 2014.
Board Member
Doug Nutting – Sidney, BC
Doug is a OneAbility co-founder and previous co-chair. Doug worked for Community Living Victoria for 7 years and moved on to the position of Coordinator of Integrated Recreation Services with the Municipalities of Greater Victoria. Utilizing the same vision and skills he had demonstrated earlier in his career, Doug became the Executive Director and guided the development of Integrated Recreation Services into the partnership of services known as Recreation Integration Victoria (RIV). RIV was recognized across Canada as a premier inclusive service delivery and funding model.
Doug has volunteered for a number of organizations over the years including: Co-founder and President of the Victoria Career Development Society; Advisor to the Vancouver Island Head Injury Society; President of the Greater Victoria Alternative Communications Society; Chair of Sports for the Blind and Visually Impaired; member of the Sports Committee with B.C. Summer Games; the British Columbia Recreation and Parks Association; a member of the Vocational Services Committee, British Columbia Association for Community Living; Co-founder and Director of Operations for the Disabled Sailing Association of BC, Victoria Branch; Co-founder and Director of the national Able Sail Network; member of the University of Victoria’s Cooperative Education Council; and a founding Director of the World Disability Union.
Doug’s volunteer efforts were recognized with the presentation of an Award of Merit in the Community Leader of the Year division of the CFAX Community Awards. Doug received the University of Victoria’s Co-operative Education Program’s Twentieth Anniversary Award, as well as their Employer of the Year Award.
Board Member
Mike Waters – Victoria, BC
For more than 25 years, Mike Waters has worked to build community. He has led and supported numerous initiatives that worked to develop, evaluate and improve programs, services, facilities, and infrastructure for municipal and regional governments, and not-for-profit agencies in Canada and the UK.
Throughout his career, Mike has held senior leadership roles focused on community development, social planning, recreation, parks, and environmental services. More recently, he has led numerous engagement-focused initiatives aimed at improving systems supporting youth, families, community safety, and community-based healthcare.
Mike is the co-founder of Kimmik Consulting—a Victoria-based group that provides process facilitation and stakeholder engagement support and training for teams working in not-for-profit, government, and corporate organizations.
Board Member
Daniel Young-Mercer – Kamloops, BC
Daniel Young-Mercer has a combined 10 years of experience working in Indigenous community as a program coordinator, as well as coordinating health and wellness programming for Indigenous communities across British Columbia.
Previous work includes designing and facilitating, train-the-trainer, multi-day workshops, which served the purpose of equipping Indigenous community leaders with tools and resources to minimize barriers to participation and to be self-reliant in leading their own program offerings.
Daniel enjoys being assigned to project management opportunities so he can experience behind-the-scenes strategy and operations, allowing him to gain valuable perspective which can be used to provide feedback to improve frameworks for the future.
Support Team
Operations and Program Coordinator
Samantha Heron
Samantha (she, her, hers and elle) is a conflict management consultant, fully insured mediator, facilitator and community connector in the SafeSport and sport sector in Canada. Samantha’s previous career, education, research, and personal values shape her approach to conflict management. Samantha emphasizes a highly collaborative approach focused on shared leadership, justice, empathy, and inclusion.
Samantha’s Mediation and Complaint Management business, Blue Heron Resolutions provides mediation, conflict management services and conflict skillset building to clients in the Sport, Para Sport and Disability and Inclusion sector. Samantha holds a large role in overseeing operations at OneAbility, a disability sport collective in Victoria B.C., and coordinates programming and social media / marketing with INclusion INcorporated. Samantha is also a volunteer and Director at Large with Kootenay Adaptive Sport Association (KASA), and sits on multiple SafeSport / Safety committees and diversity and inclusion committees.
Further, Samantha regularly contributes to research in the fields of SafeSport and Sport, Change Management, Leadership Development and Para Sport / Disability Sport. Her unique research and education in Conflict Analysis and Management centres on how shared leadership (with a focus away from our masculine styles of leadership to feminine) can improve and impact the para sport system in Canada, and our organizational systems writ large.
Samantha has a vested interest in making a difference for women and persons with a disability in sport. Because of this, Samantha is grateful for her previous career in coaching and recruiting for rowing and para rowing. She is most proud of the work she did to increase financial and human capacity, as well as education and awareness for para rowing in Canada, from grassroots to performance levels. She views sport as a space to experience belonging and believes sport is a medium for people to express their values, skill, and ambition