Our Team
Aurora Borin (she/her)
Aurora is a queer, geek, cosplayer, Wiccan priestess, gamer, animal lover, hobby cook, extreme Taurus, and avid reader.
Aurora is the Founding Director of Bow Valley DEI. She speaks and consults regularly with a variety of organizations and businesses about how to create spaces in which everybody truly belongs. She maintains a permanent position with the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides as their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Mental Health Services Manager and applies this unique intersection of knowledge and experience to all of her DEI work.
She is a fierce advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ folks and has been privileged to speak before thousands at the Women's March on Calgary, as well as at Power of Being a Girl, Trans Day of Remembrance, International Women's Day, and many other important markers in the lives of girls, women, and 2SLGBTQ+communities. She is a community organizer who loves to create brave, comfortable, accountable moments that encourage all to be more than they thought they could be.
She is a successful career musician and is acclaimed throughout Calgary and the Bow Valley for her abilities as a collaborative pianist and educator. Her work has been described as brilliant, but more to her liking, she was once called a "Force of Nature".
Aurora lives in Banff, Alberta where she reads, hikes, eats charcuterie, drinks wine and scotch, and imagines new ways to live the dreams of her childhood. Aurora is bi/pansexual and is transgender, though she prefers the label queer.
Josie is a Training Officer with the Calgary Fire Department who has worked in the fire service for 10 years. She has a degree in Education from the University of Ottawa and formerly worked as an Ontario Certified Teacher. Combining her passions for education and emergency response has been ongoing adventure as she pushes cultural progress within the fire department through her recruits. Josie has helped facilitate "Camp Courage", an emergency services youth camp for girls, for the past two years, instilling a passion for firefighting in the next generation of young women. She was the 2021 recipient of the Fire Service Women of Ontario's "Pink Helmet of Courage" award for her work towards a more inclusive fire department.
Josie is a transgender lesbian woman who passionately educates about and advocates for LGBTQ+ people in an increasingly divisive world. She studies biology, genetics, neuroscience, and psychology regularly to stay current on peer-reviewed research. She is a strong advocate for mental health, teaching stress management and resiliency as a preventative intervention for critical incident stress, trauma, and PTSD.
Josie lives in Calgary with her partner and her cat. She reads fantasy novels, plays D&D, loves camping, hiking, and portage, and travels the world whenever she can. She has a passion for Medieval and Renaissance history, folklore, and literature, a love of cooking and baking, and she makes a kettlecorn so addictively delicious that it has been banned in several districts.
At the outset of her 7th year in Alberta, Josie is excited to be working with Bow Valley DEI to make a difference for all of the kind, outgoing, adventurous people she has grown to love and care about in this beautiful province.
Madeline Kennedy (she/her)
Josie Downes (she/her)
Madeline grew up in the Bow Valley and feels most at home in the mountains. When she isn’t out hiking and biking, studying philosophy and playing the piano are two of her favourite things. Madeline will soon be applying for university to study human rights and law.
Madeline is exploring what it means to truly be an upstander—to put allyship into action. She’s passionate about the intersection of identity, politics and human rights. As communications assistant and intern extraordinaire, Madeline is grateful to work with and learn more from Aurora about creating safe spaces for everyone.