Caroline Andrew
University of Ottawa

Caroline Andrew is director of the Centre on Governance at the University of Ottawa. For the past forty years she conducted research on cities, looking at building inclusive cities for women and girls in all their diversity and at the integration of recent immigrants. She is heavily involved in partnerships with the City of Ottawa to better integrate recent immigrants. Three such partnerships are Youth Futures/Avenir Jeunesse, which also involves Ottawa Community Housing, the Ottawa postsecondary education sector and many community-based agencies; a project to evaluate the implementation of the city’s Equity and Inclusion Lens in collaboration  with the City for All Women Initiative; and the Ottawa Local Immigration Partnership (OLIP). Professor Andrew sits on the boards of the Lowertown Community Resource Centre and the Catholic Centre for Immigrants.  In 2013, she was named to the Order of Ottawa and in 2014, to the Order of Canada. She was chair of the University’s Task Force on Respect and Equality, which recently submitted its report, Ending Sexual Violence at the University of Ottawa.

Michael Orsini
University of Ottawa

Michael Orsini is Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies, and currently Director of the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies. A former newspaper journalist, his main areas of research interest are in critical approaches to health politics and policy, and the role of social movements in policy processes. His substantive areas of interest include autism, HIV/AIDS and contested illnesses, especially those that affect marginalized people. Professor Orsini is currently working on a SSHRC-funded project titled Feeling Policy, which explores the roles of emotions and stigma in three key policy fields, namely obesity, harm reduction in the field of HIV, and dangerous sexual offender policy. He is also exploring the impact of criminalization discourse on HIV/AIDS advocacy, thanks to support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. At the University of Ottawa, he recently served as a member of the Task Force on Equality and Respect, which was struck by the University last spring to explore how to foster a culture free of sexual violence.

Nancy Peckford
Equal Voice

Nancy was born and raised in a highly political family in Newfoundland and Labrador.  After living in a variety of rural, urban and northern communities throughout her childhood, she left the island to attend Smith College, one of the top ranked liberal arts colleges in the US.  She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government and minored in French and Economics.

A Canadian at heart, Nancy returned to Newfoundland to complete a Masters degree focusing on the formation of women's political interests in the 1970s and 1980s in Canada.  During this time, she also gained the confidence of her peers and served as President of the Graduate Students' Union.

After being selected as a Canadian Parliamentary Intern in 1999, she came to Ottawa to serve in a non-partisan capacity in the offices of Susan Whelan (Liberal Party) and Bob Mills (Reform Party).  She subsequently worked with several non-governmental organizations to lead national campaigns on a variety of policy initiatives, including a major national gender budgeting analysis. 

A mother to three young children and partner to Craig, Nancy has had the opportunity to work on a number of political campaigns from the nomination up. She is in awe of every women who seeks to put her name on the ballot and highly encouraged by the many more women and men who rally behind them.  

Donna Blackburn
Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Donna was born with a passion for politics and raised in Kapuskasing, Ontario. She graduated from Laurentian University and pursued her lifelong dream of working on Parliament Hill. The highlight of her stint on the Hill was working with The Honourable Sheila Copps, the first woman Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. After the birth of her daughter her attention turned to issues around education. Donna was elected to the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board in 2010. She is the first openly gay person to serve in this position In 2014, she was re-elected in a landslide victory.

Melissa Haussman
Carleton University

Melissa Haussman is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. Her research has centered on women’s ability to gender public policy and related debates, especially on reproductive rights and health care systems in North America. She is particularly interested in the roles played by federalism and supranational mechanisms in affording either opportunities or barriers to women’s policy successes.

Melissa Haussman is Professor of Political Science at Carleton University.   Her research has centered on women’s ability to gender public policy and related debates, especially on reproductive rights and health care systems in North America. She is particularly interested in the roles played by federalism and supranational mechanisms in affording either opportunities or barriers to women’s policy successes.

Melissa is the author, co-author and co-editor of five books, including:  Reproductive Rights and the State: Getting the Birth-Control, RU-486, Morning-After Pills and the Gardasil Vaccine to the US Market (Praeger, 2013, author); Co-author, with Charles Hauss, Comparative Politics:  Domestic Responses to Global Challenges (Cengage, 2010); Co-editor and Chapter author, in Haussman, Marian Sawer and Jill Vickers, eds., Federalism, Feminism and Multilevel Governance (Ashgate, 2010); Co-editor and chapter author, with Birgit Sauer, Gendering the State in the Age of Globalization: Women’s Movements and State Feminism in Post-Industrial Democracies (Boulder: Rowman andLittlefield Press, 2007); and author, Abortion Politics in North America (Lynne Rienner,2005). 

Melissa is the co-editor with Oriana Palusci of the International Journal of Canadian Studies.  She is currently on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, DC.  She has served on the Editorial Boards of the APSA Journal PS and the International Political Science Association’s journal, the International Political Science Review.

Penny Collenette
University of Ottawa

Penny, a lawyer, public commentator and educator, has had a unique career which spans public, corporate and academic worlds.  Her career path has taken her from a Prime Minister’s office to boardrooms and classrooms. From 2002-2004, she was a Senior Fellow at the Centre of Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

A member of the Order of Ontario, she has also been inducted into the honour society of the Faculty of Law; named to the Top 100 List of the Women’s Executive Network (WXN), and to the inaugural list of the International Alliance for Women ( TIAW) Penny is an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Common Law, University of Ottawa. She specializes in governance, ethics, corporate responsibility and the intersection of business and human rights.

Previously, she was Director of Appointments in the Prime Minister’s Office (1993-1997). During her tenure, the number of female appointments increased to 39 percent, a major increase jump in statistics.  In 2008, she became the federal Liberal candidate in Ottawa Centre. In the corporate world, she held the position of Vice President, Chairman’s Office, George Weston Ltd. She was also a Director of Holt, Renfrew Ltd.