Karen Restoule

Expert Overview

Karen Restoule is a public affairs professional specializing in community and stakeholder engagement, issues management, and Indigenous policy – specifically Indigenous economic reconciliation, Indigenous self-government, and Indigenous women and families.

Karen is currently a Vice President with Crestview Strategy. Prior to joining Crestview, she led an environmental consulting firm that worked with Indigenous communities, building on a previous role where she served First Nations leaders as the Director of Justice at Chiefs of Ontario advancing innovative and strategic policy solutions to legacy challenges.

Karen is committed to advancing projects to create a brighter economic future for First Nations and Canada. She co-founded BOLD Realities, leading initiatives to advance the industry-Indigenous relationship. In 2018, they partnered with TakingITGlobal to launch whose.land, a web-based mobile app that provides users with information about Indigenous territories as a starting point for respectful and mutually-beneficial partnerships.

In addition, Karen previously spent more than a decade working in Ontario’s justice system. Early in her career, she worked at a legal aid clinic supporting victims rights and later served as a probation and parole officer in northeastern Ontario. In recent years, she led Ontario’s administrative justice system as a public sector executive at Tribunals Ontario, responsible for the Ontario Parole Board, the Landlord and Tenant Board, and other constituent tribunals and boards.

A graduate of the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall’s Intensive Program in Aboriginal Lands, Resources, and Governments, and University of Ottawa’s French Common Law Program, Karen was the youngest and most recent graduate to be inducted into the Faculty of Law’s Honours Society in 2014 for using her legal education as a foundation for making significant contributions to society. She was named Public Policy Forum’s 2018 Prime Ministers of Canada Fellow and received CivicAction’s 2018 Emerging Leader Award.

A sought-after voice on Indigenous economic and governance reconciliation, Karen appears regularly as a guest speaker on national radio, podcasts, conferences, and is a contributing writer at The Hub Canada. Karen lends her expertise to a number of advisory bodies, including Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, TC Energy, Connected North, and serves on boards for Venture For Canada and Canadian Club Toronto. She has served on juries for prestigious Canadian policy awards, The Donner Prize and The Hunter Prize.

Karen is Ojibwe from Dokis First Nation and a beneficiary of the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850.