Nazli
Azimikor

Nazli is the Supervisor of Continuous Improvement in Water Services at Metro Vancouver. She is also a member of the advisory committee on Environment and Climate at the City of New Westminster. With a graduate degree in Civil engineering and over 10 years of experience in engineering design and construction, she appreciates the challenges faced by public sector organizations to reduce green house gas emissions and increase climate resilience. She’s passionate about applying systems thinking and process innovation to overcome these challenges. Nazli has a passion for inspiring and empowering her colleagues and bringing out of the box thinking to public sector organizations. Realizing the important role that policies and procedures play in public sector utilities, she envisions a future where effective policies, efficient processes and a culture of collaboration continuously yield accelerated learning and innovative solutions.

PROJECT

Lean Green Region is an initiative to facilitate the application of Systems Thinking and Lean methodology in two local government bodies to help them reach higher levels of sustainability. As the supervisor of Continuous Improvement, I will be working with teams across Water Services Utility in Metro Vancouver to find improvement opportunities and to continuously reach higher levels of sustainability, safety, quality, service delivery, equity and fiscal efficiency. I will be helping the department identify tangible means to measure GHG emissions, energy consumption and environmental impact in managing its water infrastructure. This data-driven approach will help teams navigate the complexity of aiming at multiple, sometimes competing, objectives and find opportunities to apply innovation to their processes. The goal is to find solutions that work synergically to address multiple problems at the same time, eliminating trade-offs. As a member of the Environment and Climate Advisory Committee to the City of New Westminster, I will be working with other committee members to consider a systemic response to climate change. In advising the City’s Environment and Climate Task Force on Bold actions related to climate change, addressing interdependencies and ensuring equity will increase our chances of success.

I am passionate about public service and helping public sector organizations find meaningful ways to make improvements. The work environment in public sector organizations is very complex and involves many stakeholders with different priorities. After over a decade of performing engineering work on projects including buildings, transportation, and utilities infrastructure, I have developed a unique talent for inspiring and empowering my highly talented colleagues to tackle complexity by considering interdependencies and thinking systemically. I am motivated to further develop the art of arranging and organizing information in these complex environments in such a way that helps functional teams make sense of their problems and understand the full scope of the interdependencies. This together with cross-sector collaboration will help uncover opportunities for innovation. The best solutions solve multiple problems at the same time. With this goal, I have expanded my engineering career to include the continuous improvement domain and am very excited about the role I play both at Metro Vancouver’s Water Services and City of New Westminster’s Climate and Environment advisory committee where I get to apply systems thinking and facilitate cross collaboration.

MOTIVATION FOR AND COMMITMENT TO CREATING A BETTER AND MORE SUSTAINABLE PLANET

As the mother of two young daughters, playing my part in tackling climate change is one more way in which I hope to secure a bright future for my kids. I envision a future in which a cohesive and systemic coalition of private and public partnership makes it possible for economic prosperity to be fully aligned with sustainability. To this end, I’m committed to continue to increase my awareness of challenges associated with climate action and exploit lessons learnt. I aspire to effectively organize this information to help my colleagues connect the dots more efficiently and reach their multiple objectives.