Daniel LeBlanc

 

Daniel LeBlanc is the founding Executive Director of Nation Prospère Acadie and the main initiator of its various projects. A social entrepreneur, he has over 35 years of experience in project development and management in Atlantic Canada and internationally.

 

He began his career at the UN, spending six years with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), working with many accomplished diplomats, including Sergio Vieira de Mello. Following training in emergency preparedness, he was assigned to humanitarian crisis management and infrastructure reconstruction in sub-Saharan Africa, Iraq, Cambodia and at Geneva headquarters.

 

On the community front in Atlantic Canada, he was founding president of the Commission de l'odyssée acadienne in 1998 and of the Sentier de l'Étoile project in 2006. Between 1999 and 2007 he held the position of Canada's first Riverkeeper, where he developed and led the epic campaign to restore the Petitcodiac River. This $110-million project put an end to Canada's longest-standing environmental battle (since 1963) and launched one of the world's largest river restoration projects. During this period, he served for five years on the Board of Directors of the Waterkeeper Alliance, chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

 

In business, he co-founded the tour operator Le Rêve Canadien in 1996 and a small forest management company in 2000.  In 2007 he was invited to direct the new Canadian branch of the Spanish renewable energy consortium Preneal, where he developed a community co-ownership model aimed at injecting tens of millions of dollars into the regions. He returned to this role for the Canadian company Innergex between 2015 and 2018, working as Atlantic Director in partnership with Mi'kmaq, Acadian and English-speaking communities in the region.

 

Since 2021, his family and work have taken him largely to New South Wales, Australia, where he has worked on regional economic development, including the direction of a major redevelopment project at the Dungog Common recreational destination.

 

Married with three young children, he is a graduate of the Université de Moncton (Bacc. Sc. Sociales - sociology and political science, 1988) and of the University of Ottawa (International MBA, 1996).