Lisa Helps

Lisa HelpsCouncillor Lisa Helps
c/o 1 Centennial Square
Victoria, BC V8W 1P6
Phone: 250.361.0217 (City Hall)
Cell: 250.812.5986
Email: lhelps@victoria.ca

Neighbourhood Liaison:

Downtown, Victoria West

Committees /Regional Appointments:

  • City of Victoria Youth Council
  • CRD Board of Directors - Alternate
  • CRD Hospital Board - Alternate
  • CRD Water Supply Commission
  • Greater Victoria Family Court and Youth Justice Committee

Biography:

Lisa is known for having a huge heart, a wealth of experience, and a history of getting things done. Lisa has worked with people to create things (housing, organizations, businesses, newspapers, gardens) which enable people to thrive. She has collaborated with politicians, contractors, neighbours, people on the street, community associations and more to bring about positive change in the community. Councillor Helps is known for being generous, patient, firm, and focused. Lisa learns best by doing, and in conversation with people. She is thrilled to be at the Victoria City Council table and will bring her heart, experience and big-picture, long-term thinking (as a trained historian) to bear on all decisions.

Lisa's leadership principles and values:

  • Have clarity of vision
  • Meet people where they are at
  • Pay more attention to what is than "what if?"
  • Ensure that the scale of energy invested is reflected in the scale of the effect
  • Bring a diversity of interests, agendas and ideologies into a singularity of focus; turn that focus into action

In addition to being a City Councillor, Lisa is the Executive Director of Community Micro Lending - an organization that she helped to start in 2009. Community Micro Lending makes small loans and provides mentorship and support to local people who want to start businesses or become self-employed but don't qualify for credit from banks. Her past community experience includes: board member and board Chair of Fernwood NRG, which bought the Cornerstone building, opened the Cornerstone Cafe as social enterprise and built 10 units of affordable housing for families during her involvement; member Leadership Victoria Program Committee in which she helped craft and deliver a nine month community leadership program; Chair, Bread and Roses Collective, which produces the Victoria Street Newz for low-income people to sell.

Lisa has an undergrad degree in history and women's studies, a master's degree in history focused on the history of public space in Victoria between 1871-1901 and a perhaps-one-day-to-be-completed Ph.D. on the history of housing, homelessness and the governance of poverty in Victoria and San Francisco from 1931-1971, for which she was awarded a Trudeau Scholarship.