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In Loving Memory

Shelley Whiting

(1959–2025)

Honouring Her Legacy

Shelley Whiting, a valued member of the CANADEM Board, tragically and suddenly passed away on March 6, 2025. Since joining in 2021, she served as both Treasurer and Secretary of the Board.

 

A talented and successful Canadian diplomat for more than 30 years, Shelley brought sage advice, generosity, and a relaxed style to her work. Her experience representing Canada in regions as diverse and challenging as Afghanistan, Bosnia, Laos, and Sri Lanka helped to strengthen CANADEM’s strategic decision-making.

 

The Board and staff of CANADEM will miss her greatly. We are richer for having known her, and we honour her lasting contributions.

 

For those who wish to pay tribute, please visit the Memorial Page established by her family.

Guiding CANADEM Forward

Governance and Strategic Leadership

The CANADEM Board of Directors provides strategic direction, governance, and oversight, drawing on decades of collective experience in diplomacy, humanitarian action, development, and civil society. Their leadership ensures that CANADEM remains accountable, transparent, and effective in advancing its mission of strengthening the international community one expert at a time.

Board of Directors

Dan Livermore — Chair

Daniel Livermore served with distinction for more than three decades in Canada's Public Service as a diplomat and specialist in international affairs. He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1975 after obtaining a Ph.D. from Queen’s University. His Ottawa-based assignments covered a range of issues from human rights to peacekeeping and included a secondment to the Privy Council Office. He had postings at the United Nations in New York, as well as Santiago, Chile, Washington, D.C., and Guatemala City. He was Ambassador to Guatemala and El Salvador from 1996 to 1999 and later served as Ambassador for the international campaign to ban landmines. From 2002 to his retirement in 2007, Mr. Livermore, was Director General of Security and Intelligence. Currently a senior fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and senior visiting fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at Trinity College, University of Toronto, in 2018 he published Detained: Islamic Fundamentalist Extremist and the War on Terror in Canada.

Janet Zukowsky — Vice-Chair

Janet Zukowsky B.A. is a former senior public servant and diplomat who worked in a number of federal departments including Human Resources, Immigration, Treasury Board, Foreign Affairs, and most recently the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). She has experience in the areas of personnel, industrial relations, immigration, international development and trade. She served as Director of Immigrant Settlement during the Indo-Chinese Refugee movement, as Canadian High Commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean (1990-1994), and as CIDA Vice President heading Canadian Partnership Branch (1995-2002) with the rank of Assistant Deputy Minister. She has led a number of Canadian delegations to U.N. agency conferences and was Special Envoy to four Caribbean states in 1998 for their support in Canada’s election to the U.N. Security Council. She is currently a member of several NGO boards and committees.

Hélène Laverdière — Secretary

Hélène Laverdière holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Bath, England. After working briefly as a researcher and then as a professor in the Department of Sociology at Laval University, she joined Foreign Affairs Canada in 1992 as a foreign service officer. She was posted in Washington, D.C., Dakar and Santiago, Chile. Throughout her career, Hélène has received various distinctions, including numerous merit scholarships and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Award for her contribution to Canadian foreign policy. In 2011 she was elected as the Member of Parliament for Laurier-Sainte-Marie under the NDP banner. She was re-elected in 2015 but did not seek re-election in the 2019 election. Over the course of her political career, she has been the NDP Critic for International Cooperation and Foreign Affairs, among other responsibilities. She also sat on the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development from 2011 to 2019 and served as vice-chair during her last term.

Paul LaRose-Edwards — Treasurer

Paul LaRose-Edwards founded CANADEM in 1996, and has been working in the international community for over 30 years. In a 1995-1996 study of UN field operations for Canadian Foreign Affairs, he recommended the creation of CANADEM. The Canadian government asked him to action that direct recruitment support for the UN by setting up CANADEM as an independent NGO. Apart from a leave of absence to be the UN OHCHR Representative in Jakarta, he has headed CANADEM ever since.

Prior to CANADEM he had worked in the international community for several decades. Most of his international service was in international human rights, dealing with the politics of advancing rights. With an LL.B. and LL.M. in international human rights law, Paul worked in a variety of missions and countries including Rwanda, Kosovo, Croatia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Afghanistan. He has been staff with NGOs such as Amnesty International, as well as on staff with the Canadian Government, the UN and the Commonwealth Secretariat. He was a consultant for an even larger grouping including the OSCE, EU and NATO. Paul’s last diplomatic post was as Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Indonesia, and for four years he was the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Head of Human Rights in London UK.

A former Canadian Armoured Corps officer and Royal Military College graduate, he has and continues to do civ-mil work with various militaries including the Canadian Forces (Staff College, Peace Support Training Center); NATO civil-military training, doctrine and concept development; UK Staff College; and the US Naval War College. He and his wife Marilyn have one son, Mike.

Steven Cornish — Member-at-Large

Steven Cornish is the Director-General of Médecins Sans Frontières in Geneva, Switzerland. Previously he was the Chief Executive Officer of the David Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver, following his time as Executive Director of Doctors Without Borders / MSF Canada for over five years including during the challenging Ebola Crisis years. Before that, he was with CARE Canada; then the Canadian Red Cross; MSF Switzerland; and MSF France. His various positions have all had a focus on dealing with immediate operational humanitarian challenges. He has a BA High Honours from Carleton University and a master’s degree in global risk and crisis management from Université Paris-Sorbonne. In addition, he is a board member of Youth Challenge International, honorary board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Driven by Expertise

The Team Behind Our Global Operations

Executive Director

Tammy Hall

Managing Director

Pantiwa Naksomboon

Deployment Director

Janice Fu

Deputy Director

Zoe Dugal

Roster Coordinator

Ben James

Duty of Care Manager

Andrea Banks-Demuth

Roster Programme Officer

Hailey Johnston

Deployment Programme Officer

Tylyn Davis

Ukraine Recovery Programme Manager

Oksana Zubriy

Finance Coordinator

Fiona Kaminski

Senior Finance Officer

Adrienne Buller

Finance Officer

Philippe Leroux

Duty of Care Advisor and Counselor

Randy Weekes

Duty of Care Counselor

Mira Dodig

Duty of Care Counselor

Rima Makki

Finance Officer

Maggie Moores-Rodgerson

Duty of Care Counselor

Denyse Bourgault

IT Specialist

Serhiy Perepiatenko

CANADEM

CANADEM is an international not-for-profit NGO dedicated to advancing international peace and security through the rostering, rapid mobilization, and mission.

Respect for the environment
An ever-increasing awareness that caring for the environment is the responsibility of us all, regardless of our area of expertise or profession, has propelled CANADEM to place more focus on our own global footprint as well as that of our sector. During this Period, we have embarked on a challenge to enhance our learning regarding the environment and how we interact with it – including efforts to create a baseline and targets for improving how we deal with our natural environment. We are therefore making a conscious and transparent effort to measure and manage the way we affect the natural world around us, hopefully becoming better caretakers along the way.
Impact Driven
CANADEM has always valued the positive impact we make in the world as a foundation of our work. It is this guiding principle that has led us to form lasting partnerships, in support of other entities, if we feel they can add greater value than we can at CANADEM. Searching for our comparative advantage, while avoiding falling into a simple race to find funding opportunities, is therefore essential to CANADEM. As we see an increasing number of individuals suffering from the consequences of conflict in the world, and prepare for even greater numbers of environmental disasters, the need to prioritise the areas where we can make a real difference and combine our efforts with like-minded entities, is vital to achieving success.
Efficiency
The objective of CANADEM’s leadership has always been to find the most innovative and cost-effective ways to contribute to communities in need, and not to place the growth of numbers and our budgets at the centre of our efforts. As a result, we have adopted a light footprint in terms of our human resources complement and infrastructure, making use of the latest technology, and empowering our small team to be as innovative and flexible in solving problems as our procedures allow. Our structures allow us to scale up and down as required, and for staff to work in different teams, according to the needs of the moment. Our 30 years of experience has taught us what our core capacities are and how to allocate precious resources.
Accountability & Transparency Values
From CANADEM’s earliest beginnings as a Government of Canada project, and during its rapid evolution into an independent NGO with its roots in international service, the principles of accountability and transparency have been a component of CANADEM’s DNA. Accountability for the use of public funds has been incorporated into procedures that needed to respond to the high standards of government. Transparency has been the vehicle to ensure the vital accountability that CANADEM maintains. CANADEM’s headquarters team is a well-trained group of committed individuals who believe in the important work they do – including the conviction that providing the best value possible to the communities and donors we serve is a primary component of our job. CANADEM’s rules and procedures are therefore established to ensure that every step of the way we are confident of our work, and can demonstrate its efficiency and effectiveness.
People-Centered Values
Our work is about deploying people to help people. It is therefore of paramount importance to us that we are all relating to individuals in our chain of service delivery in a way that is respectful, understanding, considerate, and that brings out the best in us. Our internal working context is designed to foster humanity, fairness and support among our staff, which in turn aims to foster those same qualities among the experts we deploy. We have invested in a team of individuals (our Duty of Care Team), who provide a safety net for those experts we deploy. By taking care of our staff members and our deployed experts, we ensure that we have an effective flow of communication between all aspects of our operation. Our experienced and motivated staff feel supported, and are in turn able to support our experts in times of stress and prevent any potential problems from occurring.
Diversity & Inclusion Values
Ensuring an inclusive workplace that integrates diversity in terms of gender, language, culture, ethnicity and religion, is of prime importance for CANADEM both internally and with regards to our work with partners. We have made significant progress in attracting experts from 178 countries around the world – including from countries that are recipients of international assistance – so that a diversity of perspectives, understanding and expertise may be integrated into all operations that CANADEM supports. From our fair and transparent selection process, to our supportive Duty of Care Team (which ensures that individuals deployed have the resources they need to feel comfortable and confident in their work), we have invested significant energy in fostering diversity and inclusion within our roster system, in our election monitoring deployments, and in our own direct implementation of programming, at headquarters and in the field.
Partnership Values
The majority of our experts work within the assistance operations of our partners. Partnership is therefore of primary importance and value to us, and is key to the way we operate. Our many long-term relationships with other actors have been forged by promoting trust and understanding. The ability to work together with other actors, and not in competition, has allowed CANADEM to enhance the work of governments or organizations by injecting vital expertise, and targeting it where it is needed most. We believe that we can create a greater impact, when we work in partnership.