Wendy Holm has worked in Cuba for 30 years, has led two international projects and taken 61 groups (over one thousand farmers, cooperators, chefs and students) to visit Cuba's cooperative farms, urban gardens and institutions.  Despite Washington’s 65 year economic blockade, Cuba is recognized for her excellence in health care, medicine, education, the arts, sports, sustainable farming practices and urban agriculture.  In 1999, Cuba received Sweden’s prestigious Right Livelihood Award (alternate Nobel Prize) for transition from chemical-dependent monoculture to organic farming and urban agriculture.  In 2006, Cuba was recognized by World Wildlife Fund as the only nation to achieve sustainable development status. Holm was In Havana last January with a group of 22 Canadian farmers just before Trump cut of the island’s oil supply.  Holm knows Cuba well and will explain why this tiny island nation with the temerity to believe in socialism offers so many lessons to the world.

A Professional Adjudicator, Wendy Holm holds two master’s degrees (Agricultural Economics, UBC; Cooperative Management, SMU) and has received two Queen’s Medals and ten national journalism awards.  A UBC Distinguished Alumni, she taught  graduate courses on the impact of globalization on cooperatives and communities at Sobey School of Business, SMU (2019-20) and a Cuba-based field studies course in sustainable agriculture at UBC (2005-17).