A Visionary and a Practitioner

Karen Farbridge is a Canadian civic leader whose career rests on one consistent idea: strong communities are built through thoughtful planning, inclusive governance, and practical action on sustainability.

Karen served 11 years as Mayor of Guelph, Ontario, where she advanced smart growth, downtown revitalization, neighbourhood development, open government, and environmental stewardship. Under her leadership, Guelph became an early and influential Canadian voice in community energy and climate action.

A pioneer and practitioner of community energy planning, Karen helped move the field from an emerging concept into municipal strategy and implementation. She championed local government's role in energy planning, then helped build the governance structures and partnerships needed to make those plans last. Her work shows that community energy planning is not just a technical exercise but a civic process that depends on trust, institutions, and persistence.

Since 2015, Karen has helped municipalities develop community energy plans and worked with planners to bring climate and energy policy into land use planning. Her focus is increasingly on implementation: governance models, retrofit business approaches, and planning frameworks that help communities build a more sustainable energy future.

She is the founder of the Energy Conscious Communities project.

Over more than 30 years, Karen has worked with non-profit, public, and private sector organizations, including in leadership roles on the Boards of Directors of Meridian Credit Union and Motusbank. She has advised federal, provincial, and municipal decision-makers on building healthy, prosperous, and resilient communities. She has also taught urban sustainability and community energy planning at the University of Guelph and York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Zoology and a Chartered Director designation.

Karen Farbridge & Associates is based in Guelph, Ontario.