Fosteringsanctuary & well-being: in relationships, in community, & acrossinstitutions.
About
As a past social services Executive Director, I’ve collaborated with funders, staff, boards, volunteer teams, and community members (including program recipients), to stabilize three charitable nonprofits and prepare them for sustainable growth. Together, we clarified purpose, prioritized strategic tasks, recovered from financial crisis, stabilized funding, retooled policies, fortified each other, strengthened agency relationships, upgraded facilities, developed participant-informed programs, and addressed systemic pressures. In this way, I’ve been part of increasing youth housing, tending human rights for sex workers, and ensuring affordable childcare for families.
As a Human Resources Specialist (institutional misconduct), I introduced evidence-based violence prevention education and best practices within 45 Anglican Churches serving 7000 members across a 32,600 km service area. I co-convened an international team to develop best practices and co-author a Safe Church Charter, adopted by the international Anglican Consultative Council in 2012. This charter mandates rigorous policies for abuse prevention/response. Over 85 million people now benefit from systemic safeguards in that institution.
For several years, until 2016, I was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Sessional Instructor at the University of Victoria (in the MA Dispute Resolution program as well as the BA Public Health and Social Policy program) teaching Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice, Collaborative Leadership and Decision-making, Ethics and Reflective Practice, Applied Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and Non-profit Management.
Additionally, I’m a certified Restorative Justice Facilitator/Trainer, a Certified Community Mediator/Trainer, and a past Master Trainer for the Canadian Red Cross Respect Education abuse prevention programs (Western Region). Because of all that, I’ve been honoured to serve as an Accredited Observer to the UN Commission for the Status of Women and to testify before Parliamentary Committee as an expert witness in violence prevention in Canada.
From 2000 – 2009, I was fortunate to study Nonviolent Communication (NVC) with renowned psychologist and peacemaker Marshall Rosenberg, assisting with his trainings in Victoria BC. I’m still deeply moved by his elegant integration of humanistic psychology, principles of nonviolence, conflict resolution skills, and Paulo Freire’s concept of social literacy. My academic and independent research projects assess impacts of NVC training for youth labelled “at-risk.” For over 20 years, I’ve offered dynamic NVC professional development trainings in social services and health care, civil service (incl. police), small business, large institutions, secondary and post-secondary schools, parent groups, community groups, and Indigenous language speakers and teachers (Kanien’keha and Anishinaabemowim) interested in applications to address lateral violence.
I’m a life-long student of community well-being, anti-oppressive practices, anti-racism, decolonization, trauma-informed practices, Restorative/Transformative Justice, and meaning-making through epic myth. I seek practical needs-based strategies that support mutual respect, collaboration, self-empathy, compassion, assertive honesty, and accountability. These days, I’m lucky work, garden, write, and make art beside a little river on Michi Saagiig Anishinaabe territory near Nogojiwanong– Peterborough, in Ontario Canada.
“The objective of Nonviolent Communication isnot to change people and their behavior in order to get our way:
it’s to establish relationships based on honesty and empathy, which willeventually fulfill everyone's needs.”
Marshall Rosenberg