Hello. Welcome.
Fit matters — including who we choose to work with and how we show up together.
My name is Ness (he, him, his). I don’t fit neatly into a single role or box. I’m human. For me, human is both a starting point and a commitment — to shared experience, imperfection, vulnerability, and individuality. It’s a reminder that we each arrive shaped by our histories, identities, and contexts, and that this matters in how we relate, learn, and work together.
Equity-led systems practitioner, registered therapeutic counsellor, acclaimed storyteller, and Paralympian are some of the ways my work is described. In practice, I engage as a relational leader, integrative and person-centred practitioner, and independent consultant — bringing lived experience, critical insight, and care into every domain of my practice. I work relationally and in partnership to navigate complexity, share knowledge, build capacity, and shape values-led strategies, learning spaces, and cultures.
I’m an integrative interdisciplinarian with 20+ years of cross-sector experience. I bring my whole self — with curiosity, justice and care — into everything I do, grounding my work in authenticity and connection.
I’ve always been drawn to knowledge, learning, and deeper understanding. My path has taken me through multidisciplinary study — in business, counselling, intercultural responsivity, anatomy and physiology, and human-centred design — giving me ways to engage with both depth and care. At the heart of my work is a commitment to human-centred practice: addressing systemic barriers, questioning default culture, and building change in collaboration with others. These are deeply shaped by who I am and the identities I hold.
As a queer, disabled, white-presenting trans person (who transitioned later in life), I am grateful for the profound awareness my identities — past and present — give me. Holding, and being perceived as holding, specific identities has offered me intimate insight and lived experience that enrich both my life and my work. I believe identity and relationality impact each other, and that situational identity is both natural and rooted in systemic injustice and oppression.
I’m a visual thinker and a lover of puzzles, I’m also blind. Born with partial sight that deteriorated, I was trained in orientation and mobility in Australia where independence and advocacy culture are built-in. I walk fast in familiar environments and have definitely bent a few mobility canes locating obstacles. In 2025 I was partnered with my third guide dog, a black male Labrador; during my office hours he can be found under my desk resting on my foot.
I have represented three countries — Australia, Japan, and Canada — in three para sports: Goalball, Powerlifting, and ParaAthletics. Competing internationally since 2005, I am a multimedalist and hold world records as well as world, continental, and national titles. Since 2015, I have represented Team Canada, including at the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games and multiple World Championships.
In 2020, I came out publicly as transgender, becoming the first openly trans Paralympian. I began medically transitioning in 2021, and went on to make history as the first openly trans man to compete in World ParaAthletics men’s discus (2022), the Canadian Paralympic Trials (2024), and World ParaAthletics men’s javelin (2025). I continue to represent Canada in ParaAthletics in the F11/T11 classification for athletes with the least functional vision and am currently the only openly trans man in Paralympic competition.
I do not believe that generational connection and cycle breaking are mutually exclusive. I absolutely believe in letting go of what no longer serves. I’ve been married for almost 15 years and we have two incredible kids, born 2021 and 2025. My kids are my compass.
As an immigrant settler, I recognise and deeply respect that I live, strive, and thrive on traditional, ancestral, and unceded Coast Salish Territory (in settler-called British Columbia). I am grateful to the many caretakers and stewards of these lands and waters, and acknowledge the enduring presence, sovereignty, histories, languages, knowledge systems, cultures, and contributions of these peoples since time immemorial, today, and for future generations. My accountability to these lands, waters, and their original peoples is ongoing, and informs how I approach partnership, responsibility, and action within systems, organisations and communities.