Kathryn Holloway

Kathryn (Kate) Holloway (born October 18, 1968 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian political activist, journalist, and entrepreneur, best known for her work in the Canadian Green and Ontario Liberal parties, and for her private and public-sector work on climate change, participatory democracy, and free speech.

She is President and CEO of voluntary carbon offset firm CarbonZero and founder and Executive Director of the Toronto-based non-governmental organization Element Village. She was the candidate for the Liberal Party of Ontario in the Ontario general election, 2007 in the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina,. She was also the spokesperson for Liberals for MMP, a group supporting voting yes to a referendum concerning proportional representation in the Ontario electoral reform referendum, 2007.

Background
Holloway has founded, managed or directed several Toronto environmental startups and non-profit associations. She is on the Steering Committee of Green Enterprise Toronto and is a founding member of the Toronto Women's Environmental Alliance. In 2005 she was a co-founder of renewable energy firm Village Technologies. More recently she was employed by Toronto energy management firm Mann Engineering as Director of Business Development. In May, 2007, she left Mann Engineering to become a managing partner in startup carbon offset firm CarbonZero.

Prior to her private and public sector work in energy conservation, she held senior executive and consulting positions in both the high-tech and advertising worlds, as a director for Boston-based CMGI, and a Vice-President at MBS Ltd. of the Grey Global Group. From 1994 to 1996 she was featured on The Discovery Channel as an Internet journalist on the segment "Kate's Page", which she wrote and performed. In 2003 she was a regular columnist for Relix Magazine, writing about music and culture. In 2004, she was a regular contributor to Building and Construction Trades Today, and contributed features on architectural conversions of Toronto heritage buildings.

She is the sister of comedienne and radio personality Maureen Holloway, and the first cousin of Irish Zapatista economist John Holloway. She holds two degrees from the University of Toronto, one in Celtic Studies and the other, an MBA in Finance from the Rotman School of Management.

She is unmarried, and is mother to Samuel Wright, born November 22, 1990.

NGO work
Since 2004 she has been Executive Director of Element Village, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the stimulation, funding and support of sustainable urban cooperative and community projects. Element Village is funded by the Canadian Cooperatives Secretariat and the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.

In 2005 she participated with the Civic Efficiency Group on a submission on infrastructural capital to Canadian Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's 2005 Green Budget Coalition, advocating more sustainable, modular, green urban planning.

She is a past delegate to the United Nations Environment Programme Sustainable Energy Finance Roundtable in New York, and is a past NGO observer to the 2005 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal. There, she successfully lobbied to ensure that the World Mayors and Municipal Leaders Declaration on Climate Change would include wording protecting women, youth and communities. She argued for inclusion in the Declaration of
 * calls for reform in how the IMF and the World Bank measure productivity
 * endorsement of the emissions reduction targets set by the 2005 International Youth Declaration
 * increased partnership between municipalities and NGOs and community organizations

She is a founding member of BALLE Canada, and was profiled in the 2007 peak oil documentary Escape From Suburbia as an urban sustainability activist. She also participates with the Toronto City Summit Alliance on the Green Best Practices and Indicators working group.

Political life
Holloway was a staff organizer for the Green Party of Canada (GPC) during the 2004 election. She also ran as a parachute candidate against incumbent Liberal Party Member of Parliament Derek Lee in the riding of Scarborough-Rouge River.

Funded with speculative loans from Vancouver businessman Wayne Crookes, the Green Party ran candidates in all ridings in the 2004 election. This entitled them to claim millions of dollars in federal funding under the recently passed Bill C-24. At the subsequent Green Party of Canada leadership convention in 2004, Holloway was elected to the party's national executive (Federal Council) as Fundraising Chair with 91% of the vote, and subsequently sat on three financial Committees of Council.

While on Council she co-founded the Green Party Women's Caucus and the Green High Riding School, a candidate organizing school assisting provincial candidates and riding associations with fundraising, policy development, and organizing.

In January 2005, Green Party of Canada leader Jim Harris called for an in camera session of Federal Council and moved a motion to remove Kathryn Holloway from the GPC council, resulting in Holloway's suspension. No reason was provided to her, and she was refused a copy of the meeting minutes, although she requested that they be published to the membership. She subsequently published internal Council emails herself showing her objection to a suggested incorporation of the party's finances (the GPC Fund) that she alleged left them out of the Party's democratic control. . In June 2005, Holloway was acclaimed by her riding association as the candidate for the GPC in Toronto Centre. However, her nomination was suddenly blocked without explanation by party organizers. Stating frustration, Holloway resigned from the Green Party Council and from her Toronto Centre nomination. Within the next week several other prominent national executive members and candidates followed suit, accusing Harris of mismanaging the Party. .

Holloway returned to active participation in the GPC in May 2006 as a key supporter of leadership candidate Elizabeth May, hosting a Toronto meet-and-greet for May's campaign. On August 27, 2006, despite a very active campaign against her by Harris and Crookes, Holloway was elected again to GPC Council, this time as Chief Agent, with 69% of the vote. In October 2006 the GPC fully rescinded Holloway's 2005 suspension and all other previous sanctions against former GPC Federal Councillors. Crookes however had in the meantime filed numerous lawsuits against his critics within the party, some of whom accused him of engaging in libel chill. Holloway was also served with a lawsuit by Crookes, simply for facilitating online forums or wikis where such criticisms of Crookes had taken place. With Yahoo and PBwiki, Holloway filed a combination of countersuits and jurisdictional challenges against Crookes. With various other defendants, she also set up a defense fund in 2007 to protect free political speech on the Internet.

Holloway had meanwhile moved on politically. On December 8, 2006, she resigned from the Green Party to join the Liberal Party. Her resignation letter stated that core values between the two parties were not dissimilar, and that she intended to support Toronto Liberals in the wake of Stéphane Dion's election as Liberal Party of Canada Leader. .

On August 10, 2007, Holloway was appointed by Premier Dalton McGuinty as the Ontario Liberal candidate for the 2007 provincial election in the riding of Trinity-Spadina. She finished in second place behind NDP incumbent Rosario Marchese with 14,170 votes, or 32% of the popular vote, cutting Marchese's winning margin by over 2,000 votes from the previous election. 

"I’ll be back in 2011 and we’ll take this riding. We had a late start — I was the last (Liberal) candidate nominated in Toronto — but great momentum over the last week. This was an 11th hour run but we still made a big impact. We narrowed the gap from last time. Next time, we can bring it home," said Holloway.