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QUALITY TIME tasked with testing and remedi- ating contaminated soil in the Arctic, and so was her future husband, Corin Lohmann. "It was a very weird first job to have," she admits. But the work changed the tides of her life in more ways than one: she immersed herself in the local lifestyle, went hunting with people from the Inuit com- munity she was staying with and participated in community events like distributing (and tasting) a harvested whale. The turning point in her career, however, was when a scene from National Geographic ma- terialized before her eyes. "It was a very stereotypi- cal situation that happened in that a starving polar bear was walking on the beach, and the Inuit were talking—it was the early 2000s—about the impact of global warming on their own food chain and food security," Lohmann says. "That experience of being in a location that was feeling the early and accentuated effects of climate change steered my direction immediately toward the climate action realm." Shortly after that, Lohmann settled in Fernie with Corin. She got involved with the Com- munity Energy Association— Megan Lohmann's first taste of snow dates back to her toddler days in Lakefield, Ontario. "I'd be in my dad's backpack while my parents cross-country skied. It became a way for our family to enjoy Ontario winters," she says. She got involved with the Jackrabbit cross-country skiing program—which helps young skiers across Canada develop their skills—then spent her teen- age years competing in races where she'd ski anywhere from five to nine kilometres. "During one of my last ra ces—it was at an Ontario championship—I had a really big fall on a downhill that knocked me out," she recalls. "My ski came off: you don't normally lose cross-country skis, they're quite tightly locked in, but it's an example that I think back on a lot because I could've just stopped. But I didn't. I got up, put my ski on and kept going, and still ended up in the top cohort of the race. "It was an interruption that I hadn't anticipated," she adds. "Thinking back now, training my mind to overcome that and to be more resilient has been a lifelong lesson that seeded itself in everything else that I've done." CLIMATE CONDITIONS The Community Energy Association's new CEO Megan Lohmann skis to chill out by Rushmila Rahman W E E K E N D W A R R I O R The Community Energy Association is a non- profit that helps local governments and Indigenous com- munities implement climate and energy goals through plan- ning, program delivery and capa city building. "Climate action is not just about climate; it's about all the co- benefits that come with it—community devel- opment and health and wellness. And that's really what we want to tap into," says CEO Megan Lohmann, who has been with the orga- nization for more than 13 years. WARRIOR SPOTLIGHT 57 B C B U S I N E S S . C A J A N U A R Y/ F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 5 In 2005, after Lohmann graduated from the University of Guelph with a bachelor's degree in environmental sci- ence, she landed a job working with a contractor for Canada's Department of National Defence. She was part of an environmental cleanup crew

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