Sonia is a Canadian-Ukrainian lawyer and entrepreneur with more than 15 years’ experience working in international business, project finance, resource law and community engagement.
Sonia worked as a finance lawyer in mining, renewable energy and infrastructure at two of Canada’s largest law firms and as founder and National Co-Chair of her firm’s Latin American Services Group. Sonia has negotiated multi-billion-dollar transactions and managed financings of large capital projects across Canada and around the world. Sonia has worked extensively with industry and governments developing mining policy and new legal frameworks for infrastructure public-private partnerships to facilitate investment into the mining sector.
Sonia has worked with governments around the world implementing legal frameworks and policies for open, transparent, and accountable governance and anti-corruption practices. Sonia has worked for the Public Defender’s Office in Argentina, for the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine, as legal advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, and for the President of the Commission of Human Rights and Justice in Mexico.
As co-founder of the Global Indigenous Development Trust, Sonia supports Indigenous communities across the world assert their self-determination and re-build natural economies, with a focus on working with natural resources in an equitable and sustainable manner.
Sonia is a published author of “A New Human Story: A Co-Creator’s Guide to Living our True Potential” and a TEDx speaker. Sonia spends her time at her home in the country where she grows her own food, forages and interacts with the magic in nature to continually uncover its secrets.