Valérie Courtois

Executive Director/Utshimau Indigenous Leadership Initiative

Valérie Courtois is a national leader in the movement of Indigenous-led conservation and stewardship. She is the executive director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, an organization that supports Indigenous Nations in honouring the responsibility to care for lands and waters.

The Indigenous Leadership Initiative has worked directly with dozens of First Nations to advance their leadership on the land and has helped secure federal funding for Indigenous Guardians programs and Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.

Courtois is also a registered professional forester specializing in Indigenous issues, forest ecology and ecosystem-based management and planning.  She is a member of the Innu community of Mashteuiatsh, located on the shore of Peikuakami, or Lac-St-Jean.

Courtois has been the Director of the Indigenous Leadership Initiative since 2013. Before that, she served as a forestry advisor for the Assembly of First Nations of Québec and Labrador, forestry planner for the Innu Nation, and as a consultant in Aboriginal forestry, including certification and spatial planning, and caribou planning. In 2007, she was awarded the James M. Kitz award from the Canadian Institute of Forestry for her early-career contributions to the forestry profession.

Courtois holds a degree in forestry sciences from the Université de Moncton, an honourary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from University of Guelph, and an honorary Doctorate in Forestry Sciences, honoris causa, Université Laval.

She was named to the 2023 TIME100 Climate, the inaugural list of most influential climate leaders. Courtois was the 2024 recipient of the Shackleton Medal for the Protection of the Polar Regions, and in 2023, she won Stanford University’s highest environmental prize, the Bright Award for Environmental Sustainability.

In addition to her work in conservation and planning, Courtois is an avid photographer. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Corporation du Mushuau–nipi, a non-profit that encourages cultural and professional exchanges on the George River.  She lives in Happy Valley—Goose Bay, Labrador.