Jace Poirier Lacerte (she/her) is a mixed heritage Métis educator, social impact strategist, and mother to Charlie Rose. A daughter of Helene Rose Poirier and the late Gary Paul Cooper, and married to the love of her life, Paul Lacerte, Jace calls the territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples home.

A BC-trained teacher, Jace has cultivated deep expertise in co-creating culturally relevant, trauma-informed, and place-based education. She authored seven national STEM education curricula—shaping the outreach programs of 33 post-secondary institutions through her work with Actua Canada and Canada Learning Code. Her most formative years were spent delivering northern outreach across the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, where she witnessed firsthand the brilliance of Indigenous youth and the power of community to transform possibility.

In 2017, Jace joined Shopify and led the creation of their Research & Development onboarding programs, including R&D Camp and R&D Media, an on-demand episodic learning library used across global teams. Shortly after, she became Shopify’s Global Lead for Indigenous Entrepreneurs, supporting economic sovereignty by building a global network of Indigenous entrepreneurship hubs. Since then, Jace has personally coached 361 Indigenous businesses—each one, in her words, “an act of love.”

In 2019, she was recognized as a BMW World Responsible Leader for her global leadership in Indigenous innovation.

As a serial entrepreneur and mother, Jace later founded COYA Productions Inc., a social-impact studio rooted in Indigenous values, ceremony, and multigenerational accountability. Through COYA, she created Rooted Action Analysis™, a first-of-its-kind Indigenous evaluation methodology that helps organizations measure their social impact, not only against outcomes but against the theories of change they claim to uphold. Rooted Action Analysis ensures that measurement aligns with values, reciprocity, community wellbeing, and the truth that our actions ripple across generations.

In 2025, Jace launched Family Stewards, an Indigenous-led movement restoring the understanding that every birth is a ceremony and becoming a parent is a rite of passage. Her current work includes mobilizing a Wise Council to build the Southern Vancouver Island Birth Centre—a community-led model of care designed to restore safety, belonging, and ceremony to families.

Jace serves as Vice President of the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, a director of the Camosun College Foundation, a director of the Indigenous LIFT Collective, and a strategic advisor to both the Sage Initiative and Founders Fund. She received the UVic Distinguished Alumni Award and was named a DMZ Woman of the Year for her leadership in technology and Indigenous innovation.

Through her speaking, teaching, and ceremony-based practice, Jace builds spaces where people can experience belonging without bounds—and rise into the ancestors they are becoming.

She believes in the consequences of her actions, do you believe in the consequences of your actions?