Joanna Dafoe is the Deputy Chief of Staff to Canada’s Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, and previously served as the Minister’s Director of Policy. In the Minister’s Office she helped lead the development of Canada’s Emissions Reduction Plan – a comprehensive, sector by sector roadmap for reducing emissions to meet Canada’s 2030 legally binding climate targets. Her team at the Minister’s Office focuses on sustainable finance, international climate policy, climate adaptation, carbon pricing, clean electricity, and decarbonization policy for the transportation and oil and gas sectors. Joanna previously served as the National Director, Climate Change, with the Insurance Bureau of Canada, where she advanced climate change objectives for the property and casualty insurance industry in both their underwriting and asset management capacity. She previously served as the Senior Advisor to Canada’s Ambassador for Climate Change. She has also served as an adjunct faculty member at the Queen’s University Faculty of Law where she taught an upper-year course on international climate law. Joanna obtained her degrees in law (JD), business (MBA), and environmental science (MESc) from Yale.
