Executive Profile
Anisa White, B.Com., J.D. Executive MBA (candidate)
Anisa White is a governance and public policy professional and the Founder and Principal of Firestone Policy Group, a governance advisory firm she has led for more than eight years. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Laws and is currently pursuing an Executive MBA. Her work focuses on governance transformation, rights implementation, strategic planning, institutional development, and organizational performance.
Public Service, Treaty and Reconciliation
Anisa has worked with Indigenous governments, public institutions, and senior leadership teams on treaty implementation, reconciliation agreements, self-government initiatives, and governance modernization. Her experience includes the British Columbia Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, where she supported treaty and non-treaty negotiations involving lands, resources, rights, title, and government-to-government relationships, including work involving the Tahltan Nation.
She currently supports governance and implementation initiatives with Lake Babine Nation. She has worked with numbered Treaty Nations, self-governing Indigenous Nations, and the Otipemisiwak Métis Government (where her paternal family are citizens). Her focus is on Indigenous governments whose authority arises from inherent rights, title, jurisdiction, and Nationhood.
Governance and Institutional Development
Anisa has advised Chiefs, Councils, Boards, and senior executives on governance systems, strategic planning, policy development, organizational design, implementation planning, and risk management. She has developed governance manuals, laws, policies, bylaws, and training programs for Indigenous governments, including child and family legislation for Tsawwassen First Nation that was ratified in the Nation's Longhouse.
Her work also includes governance reviews, organizational assessments, and performance evaluations for Nuu-chah-nulth Usma Family and Child Services, Kwumut Lelum Child and Family Services, and Northwest Inter-Nation Family and Community Services. In the justice sector, she has more than twelve years of experience as a Gladue Report Writer in British Columbia, Nunavut, and the Canadian Armed Forces, and has led justice implementation, youth engagement, and reconciliation agreement initiatives.
Research
Anisa has contributed to governance, law, and policy research across Canada, including sustainable fisheries governance and Mi'gmaq legal traditions as a contributing author to Creating Mi'gmaq Law: First Nation Fishery with the Listuguj Mi'gmaq Government, the Native Nations Institute, and the National Centre for First Nations Governance. Her personal interests include reviewing Cree-language transcriptions, treaty records, and scrip-era documents. Years spent examining historical records, translations, oral histories, and archival inconsistencies have given her a keen eye for omissions, contradictions, revisionist interpretations, and attempts to reshape the historical record after the fact.
Anisa is Cree-Métis and Persian. She was mentored early in her career in 2007 by Satsan (Herb) George while working at the National Centre for First Nations Governance and later by Hereditary Chief Betty Patrick of Lake Babine Nation.