Keren Perla

Keren Perla is the Director and co-founder of Alberta CoLab, a permanent standing design team within the Department of Energy. The CoLab is an evolving experiment. Its mission: advance the use of new and emerging approaches for building policy – such as systems thinking, strategic foresight, and lab practices – to wrap collective thinking around our messiest/complex challenges and bring great ideas to life. For Keren, this is a dream job that’s all about embracing a “Business-as-Unusual” way of working that requires and values difference and diversity, creativity, shared exploration, and the space to ask “what if?”

Keren’s own journey to here is richly characterized by unexpected twists and turns. Emigrating from El Salvador, she was encouraged to follow her dreams, eventually going on to obtain three academic degrees in Classical Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, with a focus on the politics of identity. She has since bridged this creative foundation into a career helping the public sector reboot policy development and planning across a broad range of areas, from energy futures and sustainability, to Indigenous programs and policies, to grassroots transition initiatives for rural communities. Keren would say her super power is helping individuals come together and to take the creative leap.

Keren Perla
Core Lab Team Member