Expedition Leader
Sunniva Sorby
Sunniva Sorby is a Norwegian-Canadian polar explorer, citizen scientist and founder of the Embrace the Planet Project. In 1993 she was part of the first all-women's team to ski to the South Pole, and she later became the first Canadian woman to ski across the Greenland Icecap. From 2019 to 2021 she spent nineteen months overwintering at 78°N in Svalbard as co-founder of Hearts in the Ice, contributing to nine international science programs and connecting live with more than 150,000 students in over 80 countries. She is a Fellow of The Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and received the Stefansson Medal in 2025. The Vancouver Island Trail Expedition 2027 is her first solely-led, land-based expedition — a walk home.
Expedition Team · Transformational Travel Institute
Jillian Dickens
Jillian Dickens grew up on Vancouver Island in a fishing family, which she credits for a high tolerance for early mornings, unpredictable conditions and the patience that comes from waiting on something wild to show up. She has spent twenty years in expedition travel on the business side — working with operators, destinations, and experience designers who build the trips. Through Gliderfox and her work with the Transformational Travel Council, she helps those organisations use better experience design to make travel a genuine force for good. She joined this expedition for the island, the communities along the route, and what the journey can model for her industry.
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Expedition Team · Mother Tree Project
Dr. Suzanne Simard
Dr. Suzanne Simard is Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and one of the world's foremost researchers on forest communication. Over three decades of fieldwork in the forests of British Columbia, she demonstrated that trees are connected below ground through mycorrhizal fungal networks, sharing carbon, water and chemical signals — and that older mother trees play a central role in the health and regeneration of the forests around them. Her work has reshaped how forests are understood and managed worldwide. She leads the Mother Tree Project and is the author of Finding the Mother Tree and When the Forest Breathes.
Expedition Team · Co-Leader
Suzy Esposito
Suzy Esposito brings 25 years in financial services to the expedition's structure and finances. She retired early from Russell Investments, where she was Director of Strategic Initiatives in Seattle. Since retiring she has served on the board of Goodwill Olympic & Rainier Region, including a term as interim CEO. A New York native with a B.S. in Health Fitness from Springfield College, she has lived in Boston, New Jersey, Dublin and London, and now calls University Place, Washington home. On this expedition she keeps the numbers honest and the planning grounded.
Expedition Team · President, Vancouver Island Trail Association
Liz Bicknell
As President of the Vancouver Island Trail Association, Liz Bicknell works in partnership with tourism associations, business groups, Indigenous Peoples and outdoor organisations to promote the trail. She retired from the BC Public Service in 2015 after serving at senior level in public engagement and strategic planning, and earlier held a diplomatic role with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Africa. She is Past President of the Outdoor Club of Victoria and has served as President of the Federation of Mountain Clubs of BC since 2019. She is passionate about ensuring future generations have the same access to trails we enjoy today.
Expedition Team · Cinematographer
Peter Mieras
Peter Mieras is a Dutch-Canadian cinematographer, drone pilot and diver based in Port Alberni, and owner-operator of Subvision Productions. His footage has appeared in productions for the BBC, National Geographic, ARTE, NHK, PBS, CBC and ZDF, including Planet Earth III and The Nature of Things. Beyond filming, he runs a long-term citizen science project on bluntnose sixgill sharks and is a first responder with the BC Marine Mammal Response Network.
Rotating Team Member
Marlis Butcher
Marlis Butcher is an environmental conservationist, author and photographer. A Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and The Explorers Club, she is the first visitor to have bagged all 49 of Canada's national parks, a third of which have no road access. She shares those journeys in her book Park Bagger: Adventures in the Canadian National Parks, which made Amazon's bestseller list. She volunteers as a director on the board of the Royal Botanical Gardens.
Rotating Team Member
Gemita Samarra
Gemita Samarra is a British-Spanish filmmaker, writer and creative activist. She spent more than a decade as a stunt performer — working as lead stunt double on productions including James Bond: Spectre, Game of Thrones and Disney's Peter Pan and Wendy — before turning to journalism and field-based storytelling. She has worked as a photojournalist in Southeast Asia, founded a women's collective in Uganda's Nakivale Refugee Settlement, and led a long-term research project on the world's lowest life expectancies. She is now developing two feature projects in Canada.
Rotating Team Member
Marine Coursac
Originally from France, Marine Coursac has lived and worked across multiple countries and cultures, naturally stepping into the role of a connector — bridging people, disciplines and perspectives that do not often meet. With a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in marine biology and conservation, she began her career in science before moving into visual storytelling and multimedia impact production. She founded ConnectEarth as an umbrella for her multidisciplinary approach. Based on Vancouver Island, her work focuses on creating stories and strategies that foster interconnection — within self, with others, and with the living world.
Rotating Team Member · Media Coordinator
Bettina Breckenfeld
Bettina Breckenfeld brings more than thirty years in hospitality, travel and film to the expedition's media and events. From 2009 to 2020 she was Film Commissioner and Location Specialist for the Riverside County Film Commission in California. She has run Plan B Events since 1997, designing private events and concerts from concept through execution. She holds a B.Sc. from Trent University and lives in Comox on Vancouver Island.
Rotating Team Member · Logistics & Safety Lead
Marty Blanchard
Marty Blanchard handles the expedition's background logistics and on-trail safety. A former Canadian Armed Forces Search and Rescue Technician and Primary Care Paramedic, he is the founder of W.I.L.D. Outdoors, an instructor with Wilderness Medical Associates, and a polar guide in both the Arctic and Antarctica. Based in the Comox Valley, he guides kayaks along the Vancouver Island coast and considers a multi-week trek the best classroom there is for transformative experience.
Rotating Team Member · Climate Resilience & Wilderness Mental Health
Kelly Blanchard
Kelly Blanchard holds the heart and community focus of the expedition. After a fifteen-year career in the Netherlands as a teacher, school counsellor and vice-principal, she immigrated to Canada in 2019. She is a clinical counsellor and founder of We Are Kin, specialising in nature-based therapy and the effect of climate change on wellbeing. Her aim on the trail is to turn heavy conversations about climate into moments of connection and hope.
Rotating Team Members · Generational Captains
Brad Ryan & Grandma Joy
Brad Ryan is a veterinarian, author and wildlife conservation advocate whose seven-and-a-half-year journey to all 63 U.S. National Parks with his grandmother became an international story about hope and intergenerational connection. He is the author of Grandma Joy and Me (Simon & Schuster, 2026). Joy Ryan — “Grandma Joy” — completed that same journey at 93, making her the oldest person in the world to begin and finish the circuit. Raised in rural Appalachia during the Great Depression, her story is proof that discovery has no age limit.
Rotating Team Member · Interim ED, Transformational Travel Institute
Heather Morse
Heather Morse is the Interim Executive Director of the Transformational Travel Institute and an Operations Consultant for the Transformational Travel Council. She spent a decade producing events and integrating experience design into operations, from programming for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to the BorderLight festival. Planning events for blind and Deaf audiences taught her to build an experience out of what a place already offers — its sound, texture, weather, food and movement — rather than importing spectacle.
Rotating Team Member · President/CEO, Transformational Travel Institute
Jake Haupert
Jake Haupert is President and co-founder of the Transformational Travel Institute, a nonprofit advancing wellbeing, peace and stewardship through travel. For more than two decades he has worked at the intersection of travel, human transformation and positive impact, helping shape a growing global movement toward experiences that deepen our connection with ourselves, one another and the places we encounter.
Advisor · Support & Safety Vessel
Christoph (CJ) Sandoz
R&O Scientific Expedition Team — coastal support and safety vessel coordination for the expedition's marine segments.
Advisor · Live Classroom Broadcasts
Joe Grabowski
Joe Grabowski is a highly awarded science communicator and founder of the non-profit Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants, which brings those on the frontlines of science, exploration and conservation live into classrooms around the world. Since 2015 he has hosted more than 5,000 live lessons, connecting over two million students with leading scientists and explorers from 118 countries. In 2017 he became National Geographic's first Education Fellow, founding their Explorer Classroom program. He is a Fellow of The Explorers Club and in 2023 was elected to their board of directors.
Advisor · Education & Outreach
Ernesto Rodriguez
Ernesto Rodriguez is the founder and Executive Director of Nature In The Classroom, a non-profit that brings nature-inspired tree canopy murals into schools to support student well-being and learning. His work represents a convergence of psychology, education and the arts, shaped by a childhood in Cuba and influenced by his grandfather, a muralist for the Cuban railroad. When students feel better, they learn better — and the results in classrooms across North America have proven it.
Advisor · Web Design & Development
Geoff Norby
Geoff Norby is a seasoned professional and entrepreneur in Fort Collins, Colorado whose career spans language services, network building, and a lifelong commitment to exploration and conservation. He began his career in market research in Los Angeles before building his own global language translation business, selling it in 2024. Today he serves as an Account Manager for Veridata Insights. These passions connected Geoff to Sunniva Sorby's work in 2018, when he provided linguistic support for the Hearts in the Ice project — an experience that culminated in a life-changing journey to the Arctic Circle. That connection has carried forward into his current role as the designer and developer of the Embrace the Planet Project's digital presence — building and maintaining the expedition's website from the ground up.
Expedition Patron
Dr. Sylvia Earle
Dr. Sylvia Earle is an oceanographer, explorer and author who has spent more than six decades studying and defending the ocean. She was the first woman to serve as Chief Scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has led more than a hundred expeditions and logged over 7,000 hours underwater, and was named Time magazine's first Hero for the Planet. She is a National Geographic Explorer at Large and founder of Mission Blue, which works to establish marine protected areas — Hope Spots — around the world.
Expedition Inspiration
Dr. Jane Goodall (1934–2025)
Dr. Jane Goodall changed how the world understands animals, and in turn ourselves. She arrived in Gombe, Tanzania at 26 and went on to establish the longest-running study of wild chimpanzees. She founded the Jane Goodall Institute in 1977 and Roots & Shoots in 1991, which now guides young people in 75 countries. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025 and travelled nearly 300 days a year until her death on 1 October 2025, at 91. The final days of this expedition are walked in her honour, under her simplest instruction: keep going.
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