Anna Brookes

Site and Admin Coordinator

Growing up under the looming threat of the climate crisis, I first learned about the global campaign for fossil-fuel divestment when I was 14 and jumped right in. As a UBC student part of UBCC350/Climate Justice UBC, I was lucky to be a part of the team that saw UBC agree to fully divest its Endowment Fund from fossil fuels and declare a climate emergency in 2019. The win proved that our university can use its financial capacity to revoke social license from the industries destroying our future, and that universities can set the precedent for other public institutions to do the same. But while UBC divested the endowment, we never divested the larger ($3.3 billion) Staff Pension Plan– and never addressed other future-destroying industries remaining, like weapons (from Lockheed Martin to Elbit systems) and anti-human tech. I want to continue the work now, as a staff member, because the investment decisions UBC makes with our hard-earned wages must reflect the future we want to live in. As staff, we’re plan beneficiaries, but also arbiters of how $3.3 billion gets spent to design our future.

Nathan Herrington (he/him)

International Student Recruiter and Advisor, UBC International Student Initiative

As a current contributor to the UBC Staff Pension Plan and a person that hopes to retire into a world that is better than the one I witness today, I’m proud to be a part of our campaign’s marketing and strategy team. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Human Geography from UBC, which has helped me perceive, understand, and work to dismantle the colonial systems that we operate within. Climate action has been a part of my life as long as I can remember, all the way back to when I was a part of my elementary school’s climate education club to walking out of class for the Global Climate Strike in 2019. After 18 years growing up in the Arab world, I got involved with organizing for Palestine in 2023 when the present phase of the genocide began. I hope that our campaign can pressure UBC to act with the urgency required to remove our complicity in the ongoing destruction of the parts of the world I call home.

Paradyse B.

Postdoctoral Research Fellow 

As an environmental scientist, who researches how climate change impacts the world around us I have seen first-hand how companies are the main contributor to the degradation of the Earth. These companies create environmental and human damage in many ways including war and genocide of innocent people by creating weapons of mass destruction. I do not want my pension plan to invest in companies that will destroy the Earth and our future. I hope the campaign shows UBC that our pension should be invested in ethical companies and that staff should have a say in where our funds are invested.

Sam Filipenko

Research Program Manager

As someone born and raised on unceded and occupied Musqueam territory, I’ve grown up around UBC. This is a place that I’ve been fortunate enough to call home for most of my life, and it has nurtured me both personally and professionally. As an alumni and current staff member at UBC, it’s with hope that I want to see future generations be cared for like I have. Yet every month, I see Staff Pension Plan contributions being taken from my pay cheques, and I think about how my wages are being used to invest in equities that profit off of climate destruction, war, and apartheid. How can I have hope for future generations when these investments are tied to the destruction of our planet and communities? I want to be able to look to the youngest members of the Staff Pension Plan and tell them that their retirement is important, that their futures matter, and the Plan is invested responsibly and ethically for the long-term benefit of all Plan members.