Jon Cada, from Mississauga First Nation, joins LAND as our board chair. With years of experience from his career in economic development, working alongside Indigenous and community partners throughout the Robinson Huron Treaty area, he lends critical expertise in communications, policy and organizational development, alongside youth engagement and leadership training.
Jon has been a mentor and supporter to LAND since its founding in 2023 and a contributor to several other not-for-profit organizations across Ontario that service the arts, youth engagement and economic sectors.
Jon is particularly attuned the need for cross-cultural awareness, and among his efforts, has been the promotion of Indigenous tourism in his home area. From amplifying dialogue to shift policy directions, to creating educational platforms at local, regional and provincial levels to help inform the adoption of new strategies at the national scale, Jon is adept at pushing for change. Jon continues to work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners to inform cross-cultural awareness and new thinking on the delivery of place-based and sustainable economic models, including for tourism, and scale their delivery to benefit entire regions.
Jon is also active in projects – from food security to youth empowerment – that would allow for the development of new, community-based workforce opportunities and strategies that aim to adapt to a community and region’s strengths – cognizant of the barriers they also face – across Northern Ontario. To move these projects forward and assist Northern Ontario in meeting community demands of the day, Jon is in frequent dialogue with unions, school boards, post-secondary institutions, community leadership tables and community members.