Emily Payne

Title: Leadership Facilitator / Motivational Speaker
Interesting Fact: Emily has held a wide range of odd jobs including: selling furniture, writing film scripts, pulling out invasive plants from local parks, shelving books and driving a golf cart at an airport.

Emily Payne has been a passionate advocate for social justice since the age of 16 when she first became involved with our partner organization, Free The Children. She organized several campaigns at her school, including a Halloween for Hunger food drive and a 5K run that raised $6,000 to build a school in Kenya. Since then, she has led, and participated in, a variety of other projects promoting children’s rights, including a seven-day Vow of Silence and the GuluWalk for Children of Uganda. She volunteered with Free The Children for a year before becoming the B.C. Regional Network Coordinator in 2005. In this role, Emily organized and inspired over 5,000 young people in Free The Children initiatives across British Columbia.

Before becoming a member of the Leaders Today team, Emily also participated in several of our leadership workshops, including facilitator training in Arizona-Mexico. She now joins Leaders Today as an energetic and talented public speaker. She is excited use her leadership skills to motivate youth to become active global citizens.

Emily is a passionate environmentalist. She studied human and environmental geography at the University of British Columbia; she has planted trees in Merritt and Grand Forks, B.C.; and she spent a summer working as a program assistant for Evergreen, organizing events and volunteer management programming. A true nature lover, she has hiked through Arizona, Flores Island, and the British Columbia wilderness. Emily finds peace and clarity in the ancient forests of the Northwest, and she actively campaigns for their protection. She loves to travel, and spent several months volunteering in India -- a profound experience that solidified her desire to work for global change.

An artistic soul, Emily enjoys poetry, photography, song-writing and playing guitar. She has an exceptional talent for motivating and inspiring others, which she attributes to her radiant smile. She is very outgoing and friendly, and one of her greatest joys is perfecting the art of giving hugs.