Celeste Haldane is serving her third term as Chief Commissioner and was first appointed in 2017. Celeste previously served as a First Nations Summit appointed Commissioner from 2011 to 2017. Celeste is Musqueam (Coast Salish) and Metlakatla (Tsimshian) from the Sparrow and Haldane families and has European ancestry.

Celeste is a practising lawyer and was appointed King’s Counsel in 2019. Drawing from over 25 years of experience, her specializations are in Indigenous law and corporate governance, and she previously practiced criminal defense and civil litigation. She is an active member of both the Indigenous Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association.

She holds a Master of Laws in Constitutional Law from Osgoode Hall Law School at York University. She earned a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology) from the University of British Columbia. Celeste was recently appointed to YWCA Vancouver Board as a Director and serves on the Governance Committee as a volunteer member of the Advisory Council on Diversity to the Joint Task Force Pacific Commander. Previously, she served on the Hamber Foundation Board, the UBC Board of Governors, the Brain Canada Foundation, Legal Aid BC, the Musqueam Capital Corporation, and the Indigenous Bar Association. She is an alumna of the Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference.

Celeste lives with her husband Conrad on Vancouver Island and is the proud mother of three and grandmother of two.