Our Team
Meet the leadership, staff and academics at the Centre for Transformation.
The Centre for Transformation is a groundbreaking collaboration that brings together the experience, community relationships, institutional resources and influence of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law and Faculty of Social Work. The deans of each faculty lead the centre on a rotating basis, with the dean of law currently serving in that role and providing strategic and operational leadership.
Deans
Laura Spitz
Dean, Faculty of Law
Laura Spitz is Dean and Professor at the University of Calgary Faculty of Law and a regular Visiting Professor at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Law School. Dean Spitz’s areas of teaching include contracts, commercial law, business law, and corporate social responsibility. She has written about the law’s role in the social construction of legal persons, communities, nations, and transnational regions. Among her honours, Dean Spitz most recently served on the Independent Advisory Board for the appointment of the newest Supreme Court of Canada justice.
Ellen Perrault
Dean, Faculty of Social Work
Dr. Ellen Perrault is Dean of the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Social Work and a proud UCalgary alumna. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in human services and higher education, she is an award-winning educator and leader, recognized for her collaborative leadership, commitment to student success, and dedication to advancing transformative social work education, research and community impact. Ellen is passionate about incorporating pluralistic worldviews, dignity, and social justice into systems, ensuring they serve children and families and improve society's well-being.
Directors
Jennie Petersen
Director, Strategic Operations
As strategic operations director, Jennie leads the centre’s operations team, advances internal and external partnerships, and guides its strategic path. She brings two decades of experience leading systems and organizational change initiatives in sectors including research and academia, municipal government, public health, and recreation and sport. Her expertise includes participatory research methodologies, evaluation design, leadership and change management, program and project management, performance measurement, and pedagogy and curriculum design.
Diana Lowe
Senior Director
Diana Lowe, KC brings over four decades of experience in legal practice, justice reform and systems transformation to her role as senior director. Her background includes serving as Executive Counsel to the Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta and as Executive Director of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, where she led numerous collaborative justice initiatives. Diana has been co-lead of the Re-imagining the Family Justice System (RFJS) initiative since its founding and continues to guide its work to create a system focused on children and family well-being.
Academic and Research
Katharina Maier
Research Chair, Family Justice, Faculty of Law
Dr. Katharina Maier holds a law degree from the University of Münster (Germany) and a PhD from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies. As a criminologist and legal scholar, she conducts transdisciplinary, multi-method research on the intersections of family law and justice, homelessness, and addiction. She also studies prisoner reintegration, probation, and policing. As Research Chair, Dr. Maier focuses on the intersections of family and criminal law and justice, promoting legal and non-legal change by working with legal professionals, families, and communities in Alberta and beyond.
Katherine Maurer
Research Chair, Systems Transformation and Family Justice, Faculty of Social Work
Dr. Katherine Maurer is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work who is also an adjunct faculty member of the School of Social Work and the Centre for Research on Children and Families at McGill University. They obtained a Ph.D. in Clinical Social Work at NYU and practised in New York as a trauma-focused clinical social worker with marginalized populations. Their research prioritizes lived experiences of and systems serving youth and adults experiencing homelessness, violence in family relationships, immigrant families, critical exploration of legal and child protection systems, and simulation-based learning. At the heart of their scholarship and practice as Research Chair is an ethics-based commitment to foster participatory decolonization, transformative healing, and critical thought.
Mitra Mottaghi
Research and Grants Associate, Faculty of Law
Mitra supports research projects and grant development, coordinating funding applications and project operations that enable the centre's work. She works closely with the Law faculty's Family Justice Research Chair, Dr. Katharina Maier. With a background in human rights and immigration law, Mitra brings extensive experience supporting individuals navigating complex systems; experience that shapes her contributions to advancing family law transformation.
Ashley McInnes
Research Associate, Faculty of Social Work
Ashley joined the centre in 2025 as a research associate, supporting projects in the Faculty of Social Work in close collaboration with the Research Chair. She is a social scientist with experience in Indigenous and global health and social systems transformation and has worked on community-based research and evaluation across non-profit and academic sectors.
Operations
Francis Kahihu
Specialist, Performance Measurement and Evaluation
Francis brings more than two decades of experience in community and organizational development to the work of performance measurement and evaluation. Known for building high-performing organizations and co-creating strategies, he's passionate about human-centered solutions and continuous improvement – always asking what's working, what’s not, and how to make it better. As part of this, Francis also facilitates Failure Festivals, events where professionals talk about their setbacks and how they’ve learned from them.
Michelle Janz
Office Coordinator
Michelle supports the work of the centre by connecting people, strengthening collaboration, and aligning daily operations with broader transformation goals. Drawing on extensive experience with dynamic teams and services, she brings practical insight into how work occurs across networks, identifying gaps and opportunities, facilitating collaborative brainstorming, and supporting technology-enabled improvements that streamline processes, build shared understanding, and advance systems-level change.
Lorina Rigaux
Community Engagement Specialist
Holding a background in communications and an MBA, Lorina has over a decade of experience at the University of Calgary, where she has served as a bridge between community and academia. Her work is grounded in EDI and Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Doing, Being, and Connecting, and is informed by a deep commitment to family well-being.
Ally Memedovich
Community Engagement Specialist
katherine.memedovich@ucalgary.ca
Ally comes to the centre with degrees in law and public health. She has worked in both areas and has a keen interest in public policy and the justice system as a whole. She also has experience in Calgary's nonprofit sector, having worked for a nonprofit law firm and leading a local nonprofit that supports grassroots organizations.
James Wood
Senior Communications Specialist
James leads communications for the centre. He brings an extensive public policy background to the role, having worked in journalism and healthcare communications prior to joining the University of Calgary.