Team's Bios
Tatiana Fraser, Executive Director | tatiana@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Tatiana co-founded POWER Camp in 1995, and has since provided the leadership for POWER Camp's growth and expansion on a national level. In addition to her role in the organization, Tatiana has been involved in various other capacities at the grassroots and national level, including: Board Member of FAFIA (Feminist Alliance for International Action) from 1999-2001, Board Member of ACTUA from 2005-2007, chair of a FAFIA national think tank on the intersections of gender, violence and poverty, NGO representative at the UN Commission on the Status of Women 2000, co-creator of Young Women Connect, a national project addressing the intersections of race, violence and poverty, and she worked for the Canadian "Quebec to Qatar" Campaign 2001 where she coordinated a CFWTO caravan that traveled across Canada engaging communities on international trade issues and the WTO. Tatiana holds a Bachelor of Arts in Women's Studies from the University of Ottawa, and a Master of Management for National Voluntary Sector Leaders from McGill University. When Tatiana is not in work mode she enjoys getting out of the city to visit trees and water, doing yoga to stay grounded, engaging in stimulating discussions over coffee with friends, and hanging out with her babes Zachary and Morganne.
Valérie Plante, National Network and Communications Director | valerie@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Valérie Plante joined the Girls Action Foundation team in 2004. Before her days at Girls Action, Valerie's versatility and passion led her to get involved in many different projects, including an interdisciplinary degree in Anthropology and Multicultural Intervention followed by a Master’s degree in Museology. As a devoted feminist, Valérie is always giving her time to many different causes. She has accompanied immigrant women facing domestic violence to court, worked in the feminist collective Némésis, and teaches self-defense to women through the Montreal Assault Prevention Centre. After the birth of her son, Émile, Valérie decided to reorient her career and combine her abilities in communications with her desire to change the world! Valérie was overjoyed to become a part of Girls Action and, since then, another little boy named Gaël has come into her world. As a young working mother, Valérie has a lot on her plate. She has her "amoureux", her friends and her bike to thank for keeping her balanced!
Juniper Glass, Development Director| juniper@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Juniper joined the team in 2005, bringing with her many years experience in progressive organizations, including the College of Midwives of British Columbia, OXFAM-Canada, and organizations working to create food security and affordable housing. In 2003-04 she was the Managing Editor of Ascent magazine, a publication that explores the links between spiritual practice and social action. Originally from the coast of British Columbia, she graduated from the University of Guelph in International Development and spent a year studying social change at a women’s university in Mumbai, India. Juniper is a mother, gardener, dance-party-er, yoga practitioner and teacher. She writes creative non-fiction and has been published in Utne magazine, Ascent, and a book called Inspired Lives.
Fabienne Pierre-Jacques, Program Manager | fabienne@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Fabienne was delighted to join the Girls Action Foundation's team in the summer of 2008, having been involved as a member of the Network for the last four years as coordinator of the Bureau de la Communauté Haitienne de Montreal. Issues of social justice and women’s rights have always been central to her life. Though of Haitian origin, she grew up in NDG (Montreal) and has been implicated in community organizing since her teen years. Her implication with women includes working at Studio D, at the McGill Centre for Research and Teaching on Women, and at the Montreal Women’s Centre. In 1995 she uprooted her three children and moved to Haiti to work for the newly created Ministry of Women and subsequently in international development in the form of community-initiated projects. Volunteer work, keeping in touch with friends spread across two continents, staying ‘in love’ with the love of her life as well as the everyday challenges of mothering a teenager son and two young women keeps her on the go, if not grounded.
Karima Kadmiri, Local Project Coordinator | karima@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Karima joined the Girls Action Foundation to run the Girls’Club program and to continue to develop new programs and collaborations with local partners. During the past, Karima has worked principally with young girls and women, and immigrant women in particular. She’s convinced that if we encourage girls and young women to acquire the skills pertinent to their development, we will enable them to participate fully in the economic, social, cultural and political aspects of their lives. In her spare time, Karima likes to paint and read. She loves to meet new people from different cultures and discover new restaurants!
Carina Foran, Resource Coordinator | carina@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Carina is (slowly but surely) finishing her undergraduate honours degree in Women’s Studies, at Concordia University. She uses feminist theories as a tool to understand and (hopefully) change society. Carina joined the Girls Action Foundation team in September 2008 as a Sexual Health Intern while also completing her (award-winning) community-based undergraduate thesis in collaboratoin with Girls Action. She is now Girls Action's Resource Coordinator and helps produce great things like training manuals, zines & guidebooks...She absolutely loves her job. She also loves Montreal, her three cats, dance parties and the outdoors. She recently discovered that she's a rockstar.
Marie-Ève Voghel Robert I marieeve@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Marie-Eve joined Girls Action as an intern during the summer of 2009. The experience was so amazing and rewarding that she hoped it could last longer. After a string of adventures, she got word that she could continue working with Girls Action’s fantastic team for a while longer! Despite very heterogeneous experiences ranging from music to engineering, building a community center in rural El Salvador, environmentalism, using a canoe in Benin as public transportation, human geography, Greenpeace, Europe, social justice and human rights, journalism, and teaching and activism in South Africa, all while throwing cycling, skiing and friendships into the mix, Marie-Ève is very happy to experience a little bit of stability for the next few months at Girls Action
Marie-Ève Gougeon, Media Arts Coordinator I marie-eve@girlsactionfoundation.ca
Marie-Eve defines herself as a social artist. What really interests her is the transformative powers of art. She creates personal art as well as community art, where she links art and education together. She is also a Visual and Media Arts student at l’UQUAM. She spent several years in Peru, working with an applied theatre group where she learned and exchanged ideas about art and it’s social and political contexts. She belongs to several Montreal area art project groups and also collaborates with a variety of artists. She has been Girls Action’s Media Arts Coordinator since September, which gives her the opportunity to create art projects with groups of girls from different backgrounds in a context of social change. She totally loves it!
Facilitators and Trainers
Anna Rubin, Fire and Grace Workshop Facilitator
Eight years ago, Anna discovered Flamenco and knew immediately that there was no art form she loved more. She has focused her studies on this dance ever since, and is inspired to share this movement as an access to proud, powerful and profound self-expression.
Sarah DeCarlo, Ontario Region Project Coordinator
Sarah DeCarlo is an artist, filmmaker, singer/songwriter and mother. She currently resides in Peterborough, Ontario and recently spent time in Northern Quebec working on a media project with Cree youth. She has worked in a variety of fields but most specifically has worked to advocate and provide media and arts access and training in both urban and remote communities. She continues this works as the Ontario region media project coordinator for Power Camp National and as a part-time video coordinator at the Peterborough Arts Umbrella.
Christine McKenzie
Christine McKenzie is an educator who has been developing and facilitating anti-oppression educational processes in Canada and Central America over the past 15 years with community, artist and union groups such as Equitas International Centre for Human Rights Education, Youth Challenge International, the Ontario Literacy Coalition and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Christine’s love is working with girls and women. As a member of the Catalyst (popular education) Centre Christine co-designed and led Girls Power against Violence: Creating the Community we want!, a young women’s peer leadership and facilitation training program on violence against women, in partnership with Central Neighbourhood House and Education Wife Assault in Toronto. Christine also designed and co-facilitated the Facilitating Inclusion program, which has trained over 40 diverse women as popular educators through the St. Joseph Immigrant Women’s Centre in Hamilton. Christine holds an interdisciplinary Masters degree in Environmental Studies from York University where she worked with communities in Nicaragua to use radio for social change. She is presently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (U of T) where her research focuses on women’s critical learning in non-formal education programs. When Christine is not in work mode she loves to walk in the trees, swim or explore the city on her bike.
Nisha Sajnani
Nisha Sajnani is a popular educator, registered Drama therapist and certified Canadian Counsellor. She is the director of Creative Alternatives, which provides continuing education on the role of the arts in health, education, and advocacy. She is also a facilitator with the Center for Community Organizations (COCo) where she designs and facilitates learning processes on anti-oppression, organizational development, and conflict mediation with arts, health, and social service agencies throughout Quebec. Over the past 12 years, Nisha’s work has focused on the interplay between structural and intimate relations of power and the ways in which these dynamics influence individual and collective agency. Through Creative Alternatives, Nisha co-designed and facilitated the Creating Safer Spaces program at the South Asian Women's Community Center in Montreal which draws on a popular theatre and community organizing strategy to address intimate and structural violence against immigrant and refugee women. Nisha also co-designed and facilitated Women Decide: A women’s leadership development program at the YWCA in Montreal. Nisha has a long history of creative facilitation with the Girls Action Foundation.
Nisha is on faculty at the Interfaith Institute at Simon Fraser University in BC where she teaches a course entitled Using Popular Theatre to Prevent Gender-Based Violence in Inter-Religious Contexts. She has also lectured at the Simone de Beauvoir, and the department of Creative Arts Therapies at Concordia University in Montreal. She is a doctoral candidate at Concordia University where her research centers on performance, storytelling and social change. When she’s not facilitating,you can find Nisha on stage with the Ollin Teatro Transformacion, or with the Montreal Playback Theatre Company. Nisha currently divides her time between Montreal and New Haven, CT.
