Panel Discussion: Taking Action on Financial Wellbeing
Panelist Biographies
Lisa Allen Scott, PhD, Director, Healthier Together - Healthy Settings, Promoting Health, Partnerships & Innovation, Planning and Quality, Primary Care Alberta
Dr. Lisa Allen Scott has been working globally and locally in public and population health for over 20 years. She is passionate about locally led solutions to complex social and health issues. Currently, she is the Director of the Healthier Together - Healthy Settings Program within Primary Care Alberta (PCA) and responsible for the collaborative scale-up of settings-based approaches across Alberta. Dr. Allen Scott also holds Adjunct Assistant Professor positions at the University of Calgary in the departments of Oncology and Community Health Sciences and is a Scientist with the Centre for Healthy Communities, School of Public Health, University of Alberta.
Karina Hurtado, Portfolio Manager, Financial Empowerment, United Way - Alberta Capital Region
Karina Hurtado is a community and social sector leader with more than 25 years of experience working in Canada and Latin America, including Peru, Bolivia, and Cuba. With a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, her work has focused on poverty reduction, financial empowerment, international economic development, and food security.
For the past 14 years, Karina has served as Portfolio Manager, Financial Empowerment at United Way of the Alberta Capital Region, where she provides strategic leadership to initiatives that help people living on low incomes strengthen their financial well-being and build greater financial security. She leads Empower U: Building Confident Futures and the Building Financial Futures Hub, delivering essential financial empowerment services including tax preparation, government benefit navigation, financial literacy, financial coaching, and asset building.
Karina has also played a key role in advancing social innovation and collaborative approaches to financial empowerment. Her work has contributed to the development and implementation of initiatives such as the Poverty Simulation, Financial Reality Check, and the Financial Pathways Collaborative—bringing together organizations and sectors to better understand and address the systemic barriers that affect financial well-being.
A strategic and visionary thinker, Karina is known for building meaningful relationships, connecting people and organizations around shared goals, and turning ideas into practical initiatives that create lasting community impact. She is passionate about advancing financial well-being as an essential foundation for individual dignity, economic inclusion, and healthy, thriving communities
Lindsay McLaren, PhD, Professor, Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary and Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (National Office)
Lindsay McLaren is a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary where her research and teaching focus on public health, social determinants of health, political economy of health, and well-being economies. She is also a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (National Office). For her research in dental public health she held a CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Chair award (2014-19) and received the 2019 CIHR-IPPH Trailblazer Award (mid-career category) which is a career achievement award that recognizes exceptional contributions in population and public health research. That research contributed importantly to the re-introduction of fluoridation of Calgary’s municipal drinking water. Lindsay is past President (2014-18) of the Alberta Public Health Association, lead author of A History of Public Health in Alberta, 1919-2019 (2024, University of Calgary Press), and Senior Editor for the Canadian Journal of Public Health. She also serves as Co-Editor in Chief for the Journal of Critical Public Health, which is a community-owned non-profit journal formed following mass editorial board resignation from corporate publishers.
Louise Simbandumwe, Co-Director, SEED Winnipeg Inc.
Louise played a lead role in working with partner organizations to develop SEED’s financial empowerment programs and a community of practice. SEED now delivers financial help services in partnership with over 150 organizations in Manitoba. Louise is a founding member and co-chair of the Manitoba Financial Empowerment Network and has been appointed to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s Research Committee on Financial Literacy.
A former refugee, Louise is passionate about human rights and economic justice. Her volunteer commitments include The Winnipeg Foundation Board of Directors, the Immigration Partnership Winnipeg Council, and the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba. She has also served on the advisory committee for Manitoba’s poverty reduction strategy and the Ministerial advisory committee for Canada’s first poverty reduction strategy.
She has a Bachelor’s in Commerce from the University of Saskatchewan and a Master’s in Comparative Social Research from Oxford University where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.