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B2C2 Members

Board of Directors

Sue Colley Co-founder and Chair
Sue Colley, VP Cleveland Consulting: Early Learning and Child Care, has been a recognized leader and innovator in the development of co-op housing for seniors, in the health sector, and in the field of early learning and child care over the last 40 years. She brings people together and leads them to find solutions. She was a key founder of Action Day Care and first Executive Director of the Ontario Child Care Coalition. She has played an important role in major studies of child care policy and programs for the University of Toronto, the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario. Sue is currently the Secretary-Treasurer of Rise Up, a digital archive of feminist activism in Canada from the 1970s to the 1990s. She has an M.B.A. from Edinburgh Business School.

Kim Hiscott, Co-founder and Secretary
Kim Hiscott, RECE, is the executive director of Andrew Fleck Children’s Services, a multi-service/multi-site not-for-profit agency that has been serving Ottawa’s families since 1911. She has had several opportunities throughout her career to establish not-for-profit early learning and child care agencies and sites, including new construction projects and renovations of existing spaces. Kim strongly believes that the quality of the spaces, both inside and outside matter and that Early Childhood Educators have a lot to contribute to the design ideas. She has also sat on numerous provincial wide Boards including the Association of Early Childhood Educators and the Home Child Care Association of Ontario

Lorna Reid,  Board Director

Lorna served the fields of Early Learning and Child Care, Social Housing and Adult Learning for over forty years. She is an alumna of U of Guelph and U of Toronto, OISE.

While supervising a multi service agency’s child care centre and implementing the York Early Identification Project, an enduring commitment to inclusion began. She was a TDSB child care advisor, supporting parent groups in all aspects of creating or expanding non profit centres in schools. Lorna worked in municipal child care services in Toronto and Peel Region in increasingly senior roles. As director, she led the implementation of Best Start and oversaw the Social Housing Renovation and Retrofit Program. 

Lorna taught, sat on ECE Program Advisory Committees and provided placement opportunities. She served on numerous committees, boards and task forces. After retirement, Lorna returned to U of Guelph as a director.

Now a grandmother, Lorna’s vision remains: systems in which all children and families can access high quality early learning and services that they need or want.

 
Sheila Olan-Maclean, Co-founder and Treasurer
Sheila Olan-Maclean is a value-based leader with over 40 years’ experience in the early learning and child care field. Drawing from her various roles as educator, resource teacher, executive director and presently CEO of Compass Early Learning and Care, she believes in authentic co-leadership practices that prepares a space where every human can be their best selves. Her life’s work is dedicated to advocacy, and as President of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, works collaboratively with child care partners to find solutions that work best for children, families, colleagues and our communities.
 
Gail Hunter, Co-founder and Board Director
Gail’s early career in the sector included positions of Early Childhood Educator, Child Care Supervisor, and Toronto District School Board Child Care Advisor. Gail is in her 31st year at George Brown College as a Professor/Coordinator of ECE. During this time, she was instrumental in bringing to fruition two new programs: Winter Intake ECE Diploma and the Early Childhood Leadership Honours Degree. On top of her teaching Gail played a pivotal role in establishing the George Brown and P.A.C.E. (Project for Advancement of Childhood Education) relationship. This relationship blossomed into an ongoing joint Jamaica – George Brown affiliation. Gail has been a P.A.C.E. board member for the past 6 years. Gail sits on the Anti-Racism and Equity Committee at George Brown College and facilitates Anti-Racism workshops for Child Care Centres. In addition to this Gail continues to sit be part of the team that developed and start the Africentric Early Childhood Education Diploma in Nova Scotia. Most recently Gail developed a series of Anti-Racism workshops for the Nova Scotia Ministry of Education to be delivered to Early Childhood Educators across the province.

Advisors

Building Blocks for Child Care has created an active and engaged Advisory Working Group. In addition to the Board of Directors this Group comprises nine individuals with expertise in a variety of capacities and from different regions of the province, including rural Ontario. It includes representation from centre early learning and child care, home child care, a college professor with expertise in the needs of Early Childhood Educators, leaders in Canadian Union of Postal Workers who have dedicated over 30 years to build flexible early learning and child care models for their members across Canada; the expertise from the YWCA – a key voice of women in the country, academics, researchers, executive directors of existing multi-service programs, representatives from the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, a long-standing organization with contacts in every corner of the province. Our advisors are drawn from groups whose needs have not been well reflected in the profile of early learning and child care programs so far, as well as administrators and financial experts.

Shellie Bird, Child Care Co-ordinator, Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Shellie Bird is the CUPW, National Child Care Coordinator. She has worked in this position since 2015.
Shellie is a parent and grandparent and believes that her work in the trade union and child care movements’ advocating for early learning and child care is critical for women and for young families and their children.
Shellie brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience both within the child care and the trade union movements. She worked for twenty-years in a small not-for-profit child care centre in downtown Ottawa.
In this time, she was active in her union and went on to become the Union Education Officer of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 2204. In this role she represented over 300 early childhood educators and child care workers in the City of Ottawa.
Shellie has been active at the local, provincial, and national levels advocating for affordable and accessible early learning and care for all children for 35 years. In this time, she has sat on local child care coalitions, taken on leadership positions at provincial and national advocacy organizations. She has been a board member of the Child Care Advocacy Association for over 10 years.
She takes her child care activism into the work of her union. She has been active on provincial divisions and on union women and child care committees and is now a member of the CUPE National Child Care Working Group.
 

Sarah Boesveld, Manager of Advocacy, YWCA Toronto.
Sarah is passionate about gender equity issues and sees the chance to build a universal, affordable, not-for-profit child care system as a major step in achieving a more equitable society for all. She is also a freelance writer and a former staff journalist for outlets including Chatelaine magazine, The National Post and The Globe & Mail. She is also a mom

Robert Froom, retired Founder of CSV Architects 
During Robert’s 40 year career in the field of architecture, he took particular interest in the design of child care centres including various projects for City of Ottawa, Ottawa school boards and Andrew Fleck Children’s Services. Robert has served on numerous not-for-profit boards including, Canadian Hearing Society Eastern Ontario Advisory Board (1992-1995), CNIB Deafblind Community Services Board (2016 – 2020), CNIB Lake Joseph Centre Advisory Board (2015-present), Andrew Fleck Children’s Services (current).
 
Sylvie Charron, Agente de liaison à l’association francophone à l’éducation des services à l’enfance de l’Ontario
Bio to come
 
Dan Wise, Director, Programs, Today’s Family
Throughout Dan’s 30+ year career to date, he has advanced significant program opportunities in the charitable sector locally, provincially, and nationally for those traditionally facing marginalization and underrepresentation – including children, youth, newcomers, first in family to participate in PSE, and those entering or re-entering the workforce.

Dan’s child care experience deepened during his tenure as Senior Director, Children and Families with the Learning Enrichment Foundation, where he stewarded 33 licensed child care centres through the pandemic and the early days of the CWELCC Agreement implementation. Currently, Dan is part of the senior leadership team as Director, Programs at Today’s Family, supporting both licensed group and home child care, EarlyON centres and summer camps.

Dan believes this is a significant ‘moment in time’ to build a strong foundation for children to access inclusive, quality child care, and for educators to be acknowledged as the professional, nurturing, and experienced leaders they are. In addition to supporting the work of Building Blocks for Child Care as an advisor, Dan sits on the Board of Directors of Family Day Care Services, a 170+ year-old charity offering licensed home and group care, and Early ON centres in Toronto, Peel and York Regions.
 
Zeenat Janmohamed, Academic Chair, George Brown College
Dr. Zeenat Janmohamed is the Academic Chair of the School of Social and Community Services and the School of Deaf and Deafblind Studies at George Brown College. As the Chair, she is responsible for the academic oversight of eleven programs with over 1300 students. She is committed to working collaboratively and has established strong working relationships with various departments and agencies that support students and faculty. Zeenat has a long history in partnership development with government, community organizations and post-secondary institutions. She has held faculty positions in School of Early Childhood at George Brown College, Ryerson University in the School of Early Childhood Studies and at the Eric Jackman Institute of Child Studies at the University of Toronto. Zeenat has supported the evaluation of programs across Canada and globally. Zeenat is the Chair of College Council at George Brown College.
 
Elise Patterson, Qualified RECE, Early Learning and Child Care degree student at George Brown College
Elise Patterson started her academic journey with Western University where she attained a degree in Linguistic Anthropology before continuing her education in the Early Childhood Leadership degree program with George Brown College. She has over nine years of experience working in the early years.
After attaining her Diploma in Early Childhood Education, Elise began working as a RECE for George Brown Lab Schools. Elise’s passion for equity and inclusion has motivated her to become involved in several anti-racist initiatives. Elise is a member of the BLAC in the Early Years Anti-Racism Work Group that provides recommendations to Toronto Children’s Services related to professional learning strategy on anti-Black racism in the early years. In addition, Elise co-facilitated the advocacy project “@UWOMinorityStories” on Instagram and used her linguistic knowledge for script editing with the “Let’s Talk About Race” VR learning modules with George Brown College and BodySwaps. Currently, Elise has begun working on a Land-Based Learning Research Project with George Brown College as a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations to bring Indigenous perspectives into Canadian education.
 

Petr Varmuza, retired Director at Toronto Children’s Services.

Petr is a retired public servant with the City of Toronto, from the position of Director of Operational Effectiveness, City of Toronto Children’s Services. He was responsible for policy, service planning and an annual operating budget in excess of $400 million. Petr received a PhD in 2020 from OISE, University of Toronto. Petr works as a research assistant with Michal Perlman at OISE.

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