Advisory Committee Members
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Advisory Committee
(L to R) Sly Castaldi, Liz Westcott, Leighann Burns, Nora Angeles, Chris Kiriakopoulos and Anne Armstrong.
Director |
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Executive Director, |
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Executive Director, |
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Executive Director |
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Legal Consultant |
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Executive Director |
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Sexual Assault Unit |
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Ontario Works |
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Manager |
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Family Services Worker |
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Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence Care Centre |
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Executive Director |
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Executive Director |
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Executive Director |
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Social Services Consultant |
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Executive Director |
Committee Bio's
Nora Angeles
Director of Interpreter Services at Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic since 2002.
Has worked as facilitator, educator, on violence against women issues with a focus on,
immigrant and refugee women, and women with disabilities, including materials development.
Has facilitated and consulted with various non profit organizations on anti-racism/anti-oppression,
anti-homophobia as well as Strategic Planning and Organizational Change since 1985.
Does volunteer work for Live-In Caregivers causes as well as development projects in the Philippines.
Leighann Burns
Leighann Burns is the Executive Director at Harmony House, a second stage shelter for abused women and their children in Ottawa. She has worked in shelters for abused women and been active in advocacy to end violence against women for 20 years. More recently Leighann was called to the Bar in Ontario and is practicing as a family lawyer working primarily with abused women and their children.
Pamela Cross
Pamela Cross is an accomplished feminist lawyer who has dedicated her life’s work to improving women’s access to justice. Pamela has been a tireless and committed advocate for abused women and community agencies. She is well known and respected in legal reform circles, and among isolated women experiencing violence. She is particularly known for her expertise on family law issues as they relate to violence against women.
She is presently a consultant working with a number of women’s organizations. She has been the Director of Advocacy and Public Policy with YWCA Canada, the Executive Director of the National Association of Women and the Law, the Legal Director of METRAC, a community agency committed to ending violence against women and children, where she led the development of the Ontario Women’s Justice Network
Diana Tikasz
Diana Tikasz, MSW RSW is the Coordinator of the Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence Care Centre at Hamilton Health Sciences, a program providing medical, forensic evidence collection and counseling services to women who have been sexually and/or domestically assaulted. She works directly with women affected by violence and has in-depth training in trauma-focused work. She sits on numerous community and provincial committees focused on violence against women. She has been instrumental in developing several programs including the expansion of Sexual Assault Care Centre services to include women who have been domestically assaulted. She has spearheaded numerous educational initiatives such as a rape drug campaign, a dating violence awareness video/manual and a domestic violence screening initiative in hospital emergency departments. She has developed and conducted woman abuse education sessions at each of the clinical trial sites for a comprehensive research study testing the effectiveness of domestic violence screening.
Brenda Thomas
Brenda has been in the social work field for (15) years and is presently employed with Children's Aid Society/ Native Services Branch. She has been with the Children's Aid Society for (3) years as a Family Services Worker, working in collaboration with Ganohkwasra Family Assault and Nova Vita Domestic Violence Prevention Services. Her skills as a Family Services Worker is to advocate for the clientele who are victims of Domestic Violence, focus on the women, and men who have had intergenerational trauma in their lives.
Brenda is from the Onondaga Nation, Wolf Clan, and was appointed to be a Faith Keeper at the Onondaga Longhouse. The role of the Faith Keeper is a position on the Hierarchy System of the Longhouse, working with the guidance of the Chiefs and Clanmothers. Her role is to practice, teach and safeguard the intergenerational traditonal teachings of the Longhouse. She strongly believes that with her combined cultural knoweldge and skills with professional education serves the Aboriginal families and children through the mandate of the Child and Family Servcies Act. She is in pursuit of obtaining her Master of Social Work in the fall of 2009.
Debbie Zweep
Debbie Zweep has been the Executive Director of the Faye Peterson Transition House for the past 11 years. She has worked extensively at the system level to ensure a gendered analysis is incorporated at the social policy level and women’s experience is reflected. She is a yoga teacher and a mother to Justin and Myles.
Anne Armstrong
Anne Armstrong is the Executive Director of Gillian’s Place, a 35 bed shelter and counselling agency for abused women and their children in St. Catharines, and is proactively engaged with other agencies in Niagara to respond to violence against women. Anne has been working in the field since 1995 and is strongly committed to implementing best practice and continually engaging in research initiatives. While Executive Director of Women’s House of Bruce County Anne took a lead role in the Grey-Bruce Court Coordination Committee from 1997 to 2002 which researched “The First Charge Intervention Process, A Model for a Co-ordinated Justice Response to Domestic Assault in Rural Areas”.
Kathryn Eggert
Kathryn Eggert has been the Executive Director of the Women’s Rural Resource Centre Strathroy and Area, a multi-service agency providing support to abused women and their children, for over three years. With over twenty years experience leading not for profit and public service agencies, she has recently returned to southwestern Ontario after living in British Columbia for fifteen years. Kathryn has championed community development, justice and social policy issues in child welfare, people with disabilities, mental health and woman abuse.
Detective Sergeant Chris Kiriakopoulos - Hamilton Police Service
I have been with the Hamilton Police Service for 25 years. Currently my role is the Detective Sergeant in charge of the Victims of Crimes Branch. This Branch includes the following units: Sexual Assault,Child Abuse, Elder Abuse, Family Violence Resource and the Sexual Offender Registry. Previously to this position I was the designated Hate Crimes Investigator. I was born and raised in Hamilton. My parents immigrated to Canada in 1957. I am married to Olga and have two children, Helena and Kenneth who are attending McMaster University.
Gayle Montgomery, BA
Gayle Montgomery is the Circles Coordinator for the Lambton County Social Services – Ontario Works. Gayle holds a BA from the University of Windsor and has been employed with Lambton County for the past 19 years. During the last five years, she has concentrated her efforts on the implementation of staff training and client programming based on the philosophy of Bridges Out of Poverty. Prior to her employment with social services, Gayle was a Crisis Counselor at the Women’s Interval Home for six years.
Maureen Reid
Ms. Maureen Reid has worked in the areas of child physical, sexual, emotional abuse and neglect for the past thirty years and currently is a Senior Manager charged with developing a specialized domestic violence team. She recently chaired a community group that developed a coordinated response plan for dealing with children exposed to domestic violence that is in the initial stages of implementation. She is a member of her local community coordinating committee to end woman abuse and chair of the Child Abuse Prevention Council in London, Ontario.
Sly Castaldi
Sly Castaldi is the Executive Director of Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis. Sly has been working to end violence against women for 20 years. Sly is on the Executive of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres; She was a member of the Domestic Violence Advisory Council which reported to the Ontario Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues. In 2006 she co-authored the book “Remembering Women Murdered by Men: Memorials Across Canada”. Locally, she has been a co-founder of several initiatives/programs to stop violence against women and children in the Guelph-Wellington communities. These include: The Safe City Committee, The Guelph-Wellington Action Committee on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, which she currently chairs; Victim Services Wellington; The Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County; and the Sexual Assault Care and Treatment Program of the Guelph General Hospital.
Liz Westcott
Liz Westcott is the Executive Director of Green Haven Shelter for Women, serving the City of Orillia and surrounding areas. Ms. Westcott has served in this capacity since the shelter opened in 1991. Liz is the current Chair of the Simcoe County Violence Against Women Coordinating Committee, serves as a Board Member of the Ontario Association of Interval & Transition Houses (OAITH), and is Past Chair of the Orillia Domestic Assault Review Team. Liz also participates as a member of the Community Resource Team responding to referrals for assistance from the Wraparound support network for families in the area. Ms. Westcott is an active participant in county-wide initiatives within the Violence Against Women sector in Simcoe County, through an established CAS/VAW Collaborative Agreement and a VAW/Social Housing Agreement.
Marianne Park
Ms. Marianne Park holds an MA in cultural/medical anthropology from the University of Tennessee. She is presently a guest instructor of Dynamics of Domestic Violence in the Basic Constable Program at the Ontario Police College.
She is the disability strategy co-ordinator for Neighbours Friends and Families imitative. She has worked in the violence against women field for over twenty years as a recovery/treatment group facilitator, trainer and researcher with a multitude of career accomplishments.
Marianne lives in Woodstock. She is a member of the Board of Directors for DAWN Ontario DisAbled Women’s Network. She is vice chair of Echo-Improving Women’s Health in Ontario. She chairs the board for the Income Security Advocacy Centre a specialty clinic of Legal Aid Ontario dealing with poverty law, serves on the board for Assaulted Women’s Helpline.
Amanda Dale
Amanda has worked to end violence against women since she began her first job developing a parent relief centre in a shelter for women in downtown Toronto 25 years ago. Since then she has worked with women and the shelters they turn to for support all across the country and internationally as a researcher,
project coordinator and senior staff member. She has managed a women’s health centre, and been a consultant to a
broad range of policy makers, housing providers, women's agencies and
community centres, including to the Auditor General of the City of
Toronto in the so-called Jane Doe Audit and as a Steering Committee
member with the Police Services Board to oversee the implementation of
the two sets of audit recommendations related to sexual assault
procedures.
Amanda is a Commonwealth Scholar, who holds a Masters Degree in Social & Political Thought from the University of Sussex in the UK, and a
Bachelor of Arts with a Joint Specialist in Political Science &
Women's Studies from the University of Toronto. She is currently
enrolled in a part-time Masters of International Human Rights
Law at Oxford University in the UK.
Patricia Jurivee
Patricia Jurivee has over 20 years of experience of working with woman abuse issues. Presently her work is focussed on providing safety for woman and children fleeing woman abuse. Presently, she is the Executive Director of Beendigen Inc./Woman=s 24 bed crisis home that provides safety, counselling, and 2nd stage housing to woman and their children who are fleeing woman abuse. Patricia is also the Secretary of the National Aboriginal Circle Against Family Violence (NACAFV) which is centered in Ottawa, ON.
