Board of Directors
2017-2018 Board of Directors
Lee Herrin, PresidentLee Herrin has lived in Victoria since moving here to attend UVic in 1989. He returned to live in Victoria permanently in 1997 after attending graduate school in Toronto. He is the Executive Director of the Fernwood Neighbourhood Resource Group Society which provides a broad range of services and supports including child care and affordable housing in the Fernwood neighbourhood. Fernwood NRG is a leading enterprising non-profit on Vancouver Island, with a subsidiary company that also operates two different neighbourhood based-businesses: a café and a hair salon. Previously, Lee worked for BC Stats as the Director of Surveys and Analysis, a cost-recovered research function that provided service across the BC Public Sector. Lee also has 20 years of experience serving on Boards of Directors including 15 years chairing organizations that he supports. Benjamin Jones, Vice-PresidentBen is currently pursuing his PhD at the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria. His research looks at the environmental implications of international investment treaties (such as the FIPA between Canada and China ratified last week by the federal government). He is also an assistant professor at Vermont Law School, teaching distance education courses on energy law and policy and climate change adaptation, and a Senior Global Energy Fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment. On top of this, he does research work for Cordillera Archaeology here in Victoria; currently, he is engaged in a traditional land use study for the Tahltan First Nation in northwestern BC. In 2013 he published a book with two colleagues on the relationship between social justice and global energy systems (Energy Security, Equality, and Justice, Routledge, 2013). Ben has always combined his academic pursuits with a strong interest in community. For almost five years he was the Education Coordinator for Blueberry River First Nation in northeastern BC. In this capacity, he was the head administrator for the band school, and responsible for all education and vocational training programs on the reserve. He also represented the band on a number of joint management advisory committees with local industry (forestry and oil and gas), and took a leading role on the First Nations Education Advisory Committee for School District 60 (Peace River North). Ben has an unusually wide experience of Canada. He grew up on Vancouver Island, did his undergraduate degree in Montreal, and later, as a commercial pilot, flew bush planes across most of northern Canada, from Ontario and Manitoba to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. He obtained his MPhil in Environmental Policy from the University of Cambridge in the UK, and his JD from Vermont Law School in the US. Dylan Sherlock, TreasurerDylan is a Senior Advisor with Regulatory Reform BC, having previously spent three years working in natural resource policy. Dylan is passionate about good public policy that responds to the needs of British Columbians - most of his work is situated in the nexus of strategic policy and legislation and the move to digital government. Outside of his work for government, he worked and volunteered for a number of non-profit organizations and also served as Director of Finance and Operations of the UVic Students' Society in 2011-12. He is a former Community Social Planning Council Director-at-Large (2013-14) and Treasurer (2014-15) and also worked as a Masters of Public Administration co-op student for the Council in 2013, where he wrote the report "Building From Faith: A Smart Practices Guide for Redeveloping Underutilized Church Land to Meet Community Needs". In his previous term on the Council, he facilitated a series of workshops to help clarify the organization's value proposition, assisted staff with financial planning and represented the Council on the (Victoria) Mayor's Task Force on Affordable Housing. Andrew BarrettAndrew grew up in Victoria and has worked with a number of local organizations, including the NEED Crisis Line and the City of Victoria Youth Council. For the past several years he has been living away from Victoria. He spent six months teaching/volunteering at Shree Mangal Dvip School in Kathmandu, Nepal, and then studied Philosophy, Leadership and International Development at Renaissance College at the University of New Brunswick. During his studies he had the opportunity to take part in a number of internships – including a three-month internship in Bhutan where he conducted research and provided recommendations for the foundation of a counseling program at a college, and was intrigued by Gross National Happiness research. Since returning to Victoria he has been working as a constituency assistant for Maurine Karagianis, MLA for Esquimalt-Royal Roads and as a community support worker at West Coast Human Services, a day program for people with developmental disabilities. Andrew has served on the CSPC board since 2012. Alfred BlackBorn at Ottawa, Alfred graduated with a Math degree from Waterloo in 1973. He soon joined the Research Branch at the Nova Scotia department of Social Services where he reviewed the Mark Lalonde Orange Paper, helped establish an income-tested day care subsidy programme and was Secretary to a Homemaker Services Review. Moving to the Planning and Evaluation Division at Saskatchewan Social Services, he worked on Corrections policy and research; he also co-authored a national report on income security. After a year at Statistics Canada, 1983/4, he became Director of Research and Planning at Manitoba Community Services with interests in income security (eg GAI) and normalization of the mentally challenged. Then he joined Manitoba Energy as a Senior Policy Maker and was Director of research for the Autopac Review Commission. Recruited to the Workers Compensation Board, he established the Planning Branch, was promoted to running the 250+-person Claims Division and later served as WCB's Chief Financial and Chief Investment Officers. He was seconded to be CEO of a Labour-Sponsored Venture Capital Fund ("Crocus"). He retired in 2006. During these years, and later, Alfred served on many Boards of Social Agencies in the social services, health and education spheres, often in leadership positions such as Chair and Treasurer; among other agencies he was appointed Chair of the Teachers Retirement Allowances Fund and was Chair of the CMHA's Manitoba Division; many of these jobs involved fund-raising and political contacts. He has served also on some corporate boards, such as those of Shopplex.com and PURUS and is CEO of his family investment company. In BC, he was Treasurer of the Vancouver Island School of Art and is Treasurer of the James Bay New Horizons, also serving as Vice-Chair of the past Victoria City Council's Corporate and Strategic Services Committee. Alfred lives in James Bay; his two adult daughters also live in Greater Victoria. Catherine EtmanskiCatherine Etmanski, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Leadership Studies at Royal Roads University (RRU). She has been serving as a Program Head for the Master's of Arts in Leadership Studies since 2013, a program that supports the leadership development of mid-career professionals working in multiple sectors. Her own Master’s degree is from UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) and she was formerly a research associate with UVic’s Office of Community-Based Research. She supported the creation of the Master’s of Community Development at the University of Victoria (UVic) in 2010. She has recently been working to develop a new graduate degree in globally-minded leadership, due to launch in February 2015, and an undergraduate degree in leadership and sustainability, due to launch in 2016/17. Catherine is passionate about social and environmental justice, and seeks to incorporate creative elements – such as photography, poetry, storytelling, Métissage, and more – into her research and online or face-to-face teaching. Her doctoral work employed participatory theatre as a research method with international students and her current research explores the links between leadership, learning, and food. She has published in areas related to adult education, environmental praxis, teaching participatory research, and the use of art-based methods in promoting dialogue and democracy. Her recent book is titled, “Learning and Teaching Community-Based Research: Linking Pedagogy to Practice” which she co-edited with colleagues Budd Hall and Teresa Dawson (2014, University of Toronto Press). Catherine serves on the Board of Directors for the International Institute for Child Rights and Development and internally on RRU’s Faculty Association and Research Ethics Board. Virginia Mckendry
Virginia McKendry was born and raised in Calgary, AB and has lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Brantford, ON. She moved to Victoria in 2010 to join the School of Communication and Culture at Royal Roads University (RRU), where she is an associate professor teaching in the MA in Professional Communication program. For her MA in Women's Studies (SFU), she looked at visual representations of monarchy during an era of political reform in Victorian Britain, and her doctoral research in British history (York University) focused on the royal image in relation to how the pictorial aspects of political communication can provide insights on the persistence of inequality and authoritarian values in modern democracies. In 2001, she began teaching communication and cultural studies courses at Wilfrid Laurier University, discovering there the value of delivering educational experiences that empower learners not only to critique society, but also to participate in the collaborative, creative design of the future.
Between 2005-10, Virginia stepped out of academe to work with community groups, schools, and non-profits in southern Ontario, and as a research associate with the Centre for Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children (Western University). That shift toward facilitating communication for social and organizational change is reflected in the research projects she has undertaken at RRU. For example, with a leadership team of Coast Salish elders from local First Nations, she convened and hosted an Indigenous speaker series at RRU (2011-13) that was aimed at creating the conditions for intercultural communication and partnership between RRU and local Indigenous communities. Currently, she is part of a research collaboration on the role gender plays in public relations careers, which is gathering experiential narratives from pioneering women in the profession in order to raise the profile of women leaders and support the PR professional community in promoting gender equity. While her research is eclectic, all of her projects are united by how they are grounded in values of diversity and equity, and how they connect communication to deliberative culture-making.
Jakelina ListesJakelina is a qualified social worker who is active in military family services, and on immigrant settlement. She is herself an immigrant from Croatia who has been active in various communities across Canada associated with her partner's military duties. She has a strong commitment to social justice issues.
Board Nominating Procedure(from the Constitution of the Community Social Planning Council)(A) The Nominating Committee shall present to the Board of Directors at least fourteen clear days before the Annual General Meeting, the names of members nominated to serve as Officers and members of the Board.
(B) The Nominating Committee shall present to the Board at its meeting held immediately prior to the Annual General Meeting, a list of those agencies which, in its opinion, best represent the interests of the community and from which the Board may invite representation for the following year.
Mailing address Community Social Planning Council
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