Biographies of Board & Advisory Council Members

Ira Wells is a critic, essayist, and associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he serves as Academic Programs Director and teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One Program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is On Book Banning: How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy.

Ms. Teillet’s popular history, The North-West is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation was one of the Globe & Mail’s top 100 books of 2019 and won the Carol Shield’s and Manitoba Day awards. She is the author of Métis Law in Canada and has written for academic journals, the Globe & Mail and Macleans. Jean is a treaty negotiator and a women’s rights and Indigenous rights litigator. She has appeared at the Supreme Court of Canada twelve times. A frequent public speaker, she has three honorary doctorates and is an honorary lifetime member of the Association of Ontario Midwives. Ms. Teillet was a professional dancer, actress, and producer, and her visual artworks are held in public and private collections in Canada and the United States. Ms. Teillet is the great-grandniece of Louis Riel.

Elaine Kierans is a lawyer whose career has included both the private practice of law and government service. Ms. Kierans was a lawyer in the Toronto office of McCarthy Tetrault, specializing in restructuring and insolvency law. She subsequently served as vice chair and a director of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and chair and CEO of the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relationship Tribunal, a federal labour relations tribunal focussed on the Canadian arts community. She holds degrees in business, common law and civil law, all from McGill University. She is a member of the Law Society of Ontario. She has served on the boards of directors of both publicly traded and private not-for-profit organizations. She has an ICD.D designation from the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto and the Institute of Corporate Directors. She is fluent in English and French.

Carolyn Poirier is the Americas Region Chief Financial Officer at Arup, an international engineering and design firm. She received her Honours Bachelor of Commerce with a minor in Economics from McMaster University. At McMaster, she was a member of the Varsity swim team and was honored on the Academic All Canadian Honour Roll for achieving excellence in academics and sport. Prior to joining Arup in 2009, Carolyn obtained her CPA, CA designation while working at Ernst & Young LLP in the audit and assurance practice. Carolyn is a trusted advisor to leadership and provides effective management in all areas of the business including tax, compliance, financial reporting, budgeting and analytics, and internal controls.

Gezahegn Mekonnen Demissie is an Ethiopian journalist and filmmaker, board member and Chair of the Writers in Exile group at PEN Canada, and the Executive Director of Bridge Entertainment. He currently lives in Toronto, Canada, where he produces a TV series for OMNI Channel and hosts a radio show/podcast under the banner of New Perspective አዲስ ቅኝት.

His work often explores themes of exile, displacement, and belonging, with a focus on the Ethiopian and African diaspora experience in Canada. He is also the co-writer of The Uncaged Voice, an anthology featuring the work of writers in exile supported by PEN Canada.

In 2019, he received the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada Award in recognition of his exceptional contributions to journalism and his service to the Ethiopian community.

Esi Edugyan is the author of the novels The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, Half-Blood Blues, and Washington Black. Half-Blood Blues won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel, Washington Black, also won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Anouchka Freybe is a visual arts researcher, creative writer, the Executive Director of the Similkameen Artist Residency (SAR) and an advocate for the community-strengthening impact of arts and culture.

Born on the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montréal, she was a quiet child who liked to watch snow fall. Her mother refers to her as a late bloomer, which she generally agrees with. After just two winters in Quebec, the family returned to the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, where they settled on the north shore of Vancouver and built a flat-roofed home with skylights. Home became the sound of rain and the scent of wet wood.

She is honoured to participate as a Board Director for both PEN Canada and the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, and as a Trustee of the Freybe Foundation. She holds a BFA (‘93, Bishop’s University), an MA (‘00, York University), and has held internships at the Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy, the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen Germany, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and held positions in education and exhibition research at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

She is grateful to live in a rural space with her husband and kids on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation of the Anishinaabe people, otherwise known as Erin, Ontario, and is equally grateful to return to the west coast often. She is committed to SAR’s growth as a creative space with heart, and is indebted to talented staff, advisors, foundational partnerships, and the opportunity to work and learn on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded land of the syilx Okanagan people.

Her first book-length eco-fiction manuscript is slowly in the works.

Kathy Koch is Executive Director at the Toronto Zoo Wildlife Conservancy, fundraising partner to the Toronto Zoo. With the help of incredible donors, they help support animal well-being, essential conservation science programs including the Toronto Zoo Cryobank, and experiential learning opportunities to connect people with nature. Kathy has worked in for-profit, social enterprise and not-for-profit organizations. She holds a Master’s in Business Administration and is a Certified Fund Raising Executive. She lives in Toronto with her family and hopes to contribute to a more equitable and sustainable world for the generations to come.

Lori is a lawyer and experienced board director. She is board chair at Windmill Microlending and treasurer at the Spark Centre for Innovation. Lori has over 30 years experience  in both federal and provincial governments. At the federal level, she was Canada’s Deputy Minister of Labour and Associate Deputy Minister, Employment, Skills Development Canada and previous to that, she was the Associate Deputy Minister of Justice for Canada. At the provincial level, she was the Deputy Minister for Indigenous Affairs. Lori has  extensive constitutional law litigation expertise with a specialization in freedom of expression. She received the United Nations Public Service Award for Building Aboriginal Relations in 2013 and was named a Hill Times Top 100 Most Influential Powerful & Influential People in Government & Politics in 2018.

Karen Walton (she/her/hers) is a celebrated Canadian screen and television writer, producer and founder of Canada’s acclaimed public professional screenwriters’ community, inkcanada. Her writing credits include the original feminist-genre film classic, GINGER SNAPS (2000), Showtime’s QUEER AS FOLK, Bell/BBC America’s Emmy and Peabody-winning sci fi series ORPHAN BLACK, and the upcoming Netflix Canada original, THE UNTITLED NEWFOUNDLAND PROJECT. She is a recipient of multiple Canadian Screen Awards, WIFT Toronto’s Crystal Award for Mentorship, ACTRA’s Nell Shipman Award, a Canadian Comedy Award, and the Writers Guild of Canada’s Margaret Collier Special Canadian Academy Award for service to the Canadian screenwriting community. A writing graduate and former Showrunner In Residence of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, Karen has lived all over Canada and is based in Toronto.

Peter Donolo has served as a senior advisor to leaders in all three orders of government, including as the longest serving Director of Communications for a Canadian Prime Minister (The Rt Hon Jean Chretien). He is the former Vice Chair of Hill+ Knowlton Strategies Canada and was a partner at the Strategic Counsel. In both those positions, he provided strategic communications advice to CEOs and senior executives of some of Canada’s largest companies as well as to public agencies and government departments and ministries. He has also served as Senior Vice President of Air Canada, and as SVP of the 2015 Pan Am Games, Chief of Staff for the Leader of the Official Opposition and Canadian Consul General in Milan, Italy. Peter also serves on the boards Journalists for Human Rights, the Canadian International Council and Transparency International Canada.

Sarmishta Subramanian is an editor and writer based in Toronto. She was editor in chief of the Literary Review of Canada and a launch editor of The Walrus, and has worked as a senior-level editor at Maclean’s, the National Post, the Toronto Star and Saturday Night, among others. Her writing has appeared in some of those publications and elsewhere. She has created award-winning documentaries for CBC Radio, and was host and co-producer of the narrative podcast The Power of One.

Grace Westcott is a long-time supporter of PEN Canada. She acted as Executive Director of PEN Canada from 2016 to 2017 after serving on the board of PEN as Vice President and earlier on the Canadian Issues Committee. She was also a member of PEN International’s Lawyer’s Committee. As the principal of Westcott Law until 2023, she carried on a commercial law practice focusing on copyright, media, and the cultural industries, with an emphasis on publishing. Prior to starting her own law practice, Grace was a partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell, LLP. As a writer, Grace has written for the Globe & Mail, the Literary Review of Canada, and has been featured on Arts & Letters Daily. Grace is currently a governor of the University of Toronto, Chair of the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Council, a member of the Quadrangle Society of Massey College, and chair of the Toronto Legacy Project (Toronto’s “Blue Plaques” program, in partnership with Heritage Toronto). Grace previously served on the boards of The Canadian Centre for Diversity, Soundstreams Canada, and MusicFest Canada, and was co-founder and Executive Director of Digital Media at the Crossroads (DM@X). She graduated with honours from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and subsequently earned a Masters of Laws from Columbia Law School in the City of New York, focusing on freedom of expression, intellectual property, and legal philosophy.

Richard Stursberg is a Canadian Media Executive. He has been head of all English services at the CBC, Executive Director of Telefilm Canada, Chairman of the Canadian Television Fund, President of Starchoice and Cancom (now Shaw Direct), President of the Canadian Cable Television Association and Assistant Deputy Minister of Culture and Broadcasting for the Government of Canada. He is currently President of Aljess, a boutique consulting firm. He is the author of The Tower of Babble (2012), named one of the best books of the year by the Globe and Mail.

Randy Boyagoda, a former president of PEN Canada, is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he is also Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, in the Faculty of Arts and Science. He is a novelist, critic, and essayist.

Neil Bissoondath is the award-­‐winning author of five novels, two short-­‐story collections, and a book-length essay on multiculturalism and is currently a professor of creative writing at Université Laval. He has worked as a host and interviewer on Markings: An Anthology of Ideas and on a documentary series examining issues of justice and development around the world. He has also been writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa, Concordia University, and the University of Toronto Summer Writing Program. In 2010, he was awarded the Prix Olivier­‐Le-Jeune and named to the Ordre national du Québec with the rank of “Chevalier.”

Kristin Cochrane is the CEO of Penguin Random House Canada. Prior to her appointment, Kristin served as President and Publisher of Penguin Random House Canada, directly overseeing all publishing imprints and activities in Canada. Kristin first joined the company in 2005 as Doubleday Canada’s Associate Publisher, rising eventually to Publisher of the Doubleday/McClelland & Stewart Publishing Group, which also included Tundra and Appetite. Under Kristin’s leadership, Penguin Random House Canada authors have won the world’s most prestigious awards, including the Booker Prize, four of the past five Scotiabank Giller Prizes, and the Nobel Prize in Literature twice. Kristin herself has appeared on Toronto Life’s “50 Most Influential” list five times and was profiled in the book Canada 150 Women. Kristin has long served as an Adjunct Professor and an Advisory Board Member on Simon Fraser University’s publishing program. She graduated from Queen’s University with a BA in History.

Valerie is a graduate of the Ivey School of Business. Formerly serving as an officer with the boards of Kingsway College School and the Young Presidents Organization, and as a Marketing Director for Mattel-Fisher-Price, Valerie Connor is a short fiction writer. Her work has been featured in Parents Canada Magazine and long-listed for the Writer’s Union Contest for Developing Writers, as well as in various online literary magazines. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three children.

Novelist and artist Douglas Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is also a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

David Cronenberg has established his reputation as an authentic auteur through his uniquely personal body of work as both a director and writer. Beginning with his nascent career in underground filmmaking, Cronenberg has developed a dramatic oeuvre of outstanding depth and breadth and consequently has been lauded as one of the world’s most influential filmmakers. Recognition of Cronenberg’s contribution to art and culture has included the Order of Canada and France’s Légion d’Honneur.

Ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab undertakes interdisciplinary research at the intersection of global security, ICTs, and human rights. Deibert is the author of Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet (Random House: 2013), and RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (House of Anansi, 2020) as part of the CBC Massey Lecture series. In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.”

Suzanne DePoe is a literary, theatrical, film and television agent, owner of her own independent agency – Creative Technique Inc. – representing producers, writers, directors and cinematographers in Canadian film and television, writers and directors in Canadian theatre and authors of non-fiction and fiction books. A member of the Talent Agents and Managers Association of Canada, Toronto Women in Film & Television, and Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Ms. DePoe has had a hand in many seminal events in the development of theatrical and film and television industries in Canada over the last decades.

Charlie Foran is the author of eleven books, including five novels. A past president of PEN Canada, he is a senior fellow at Massey College and an adjunct professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto. He is currently Executive Director of the Writers’ Trust of Canada.

Kevin Hanson is the President and Publisher of Simon & Schuster Canada. He joined the company as President in 2005 and in 2013 also named the company’s first Canadian publisher. He is responsible for all of the publishing, sales, marketing, financial, and operations activities of Simon & Schuster Canada, which is also the exclusive distributor in Canada of the book and audio products of both Simon & Schuster and Simon & Schuster UK, as well as for Simon & Schuster’s roster of US distribution clients.

Mark Kingwell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine. In addition to many scholarly articles, his writing has appeared in more than 40 mainstream publications, among them Harper’s, the New York Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and the Toronto Star. His recent books include the companion essay collections Unruly Voices (2012) and Measure Yourself Against the Earth (2015); Fail Better: Why Baseball Matters (2017); and Wish I Were Here: Boredom and the Interface (2019), which won the 2020 Erving Goffman Award for Scholarship in Media Ecology. His pamphlet On Risk appeared in 2020; a new volume, The Ethics of Architecture, was released in early 2021 from Oxford University Press.

Elana Rabinovitch received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Concordia University in Montreal and continued her postgraduate studies at Carleton University’s School of Journalism. Elana worked in broadcast journalism as a writer, reporter, and producer at CBC Television News, CBC National News and CBC Television’s The Journal. After a decade working in the music business at Sony Music Canada and PolyGram, Elana took over the running of the Scotiabank Giller Prize.Elana lives in Toronto with her son, Luca. She is President of Propaganda Ink, a marketing and media relations company, and serves on the board of World Literacy Canada.

Devyani Saltzman is a Canadian writer, curator, and journalist. She is the author of Shooting Water. She is the Founding Curator, Literary Programming, at Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts and Creativity and the 2014-18 Director of Literary Arts at the Banff Centre. In 2018 she was appointed Director of Programming at the AGO with a mandate to create a cultural hub in the city of Toronto, programming across all disciplines. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Atlantic and Tehelka, India’s weekly of arts and investigative journalism amongst other publications. She sits on the advisory committee for Project Bookmark Canada and has been a juror for the National Magazine Awards, Canada Council for the Arts and The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

After studying law at Oxford University as a Manitoba Rhodes Scholar, Philip Slayton clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. For thirteen years, he pursued an academic career, teaching at McGill University and becoming dean of law at the University of Western Ontario. Philip then went into legal practice with a major Canadian law firm in Toronto. He retired from the practice of law in 2000. Since leaving legal practice Philip Slayton has written eight books, most recently Nothing Left to Lose: An Impolite Report on the State of Freedom in Canada. He has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow; President of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars Foundation; Co-Chairman of the Canadian Campaign for Oxford; a Governor of Sheridan College; and president of PEN Canada. In 1998, Oxford University named him a “Distinguished Friend” of the University.

Tanya Talaga is an Anishinaabe journalist and speaker. She was a journalist at the Toronto Star for over 20 years, was nominated five times for the Michener Award in public service journalism, and has been part of teams that won two National Newspaper Awards for Project of the Year.  She is now a columnist at The Globe & Mail. Her two books, Seven Fallen Feathers, and All Our Relations: Finding The Path Forward are national bestsellers. The former winning the RBC Taylor Prize, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and the First Nation Communities Read Award: Young Adult/Adult. It was also a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the BC National Award for Nonfiction. The latter was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and a finalist for the British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding. Talaga was the 2017/18 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy and the 2018 CBC Massey Lecturer. She is the head of Makwa Creative Inc., a production company focused on amplifying Indigenous voices through the media. She holds an honorary doctorate from Lakehead University.

Michael Wernick retired in 2019 after a 38-year career as one of the key leaders of Canada’s world-class federal public service, which culminated in his appointment in 2016 as the 23rd Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet. As Clerk he helped the Prime Minister and his new government implement its agenda and as head of the public service drove a renewal agenda, tabling four annual reports on the state of Canada’s public service. With 28 years as an executive in the federal public service, including 17 years in the community of Deputy Ministers, and three as Clerk, Michael is one of Canada’s most experienced and influential public sector leaders. He appeared frequently at Parliamentary Committees, participated in dozens of intergovernmental and international meetings, and spoke at many conferences. Michael worked closely with three Prime Ministers and seven Ministers and attended close to 300 meetings of Cabinet and its committees. He was the key public servant at Privy Council Office in three transitions of Prime Minister. As a Senior Strategic Advisor to MNP Inc and a Fellow and Adjunct Professor of the Carleton University School of Public Policy and Administration, Michael now provides advisory services and mentorship to emerging leaders and to new generations of students.

Kenneth Whyte is owner and publisher of Sutherland House Books. He was editor of Saturday Night, editor of the National Post, editor, and publisher of Maclean’s, president of Rogers Publishing, president of Next Issue Canada, and Senior VP at Rogers Communications. Mr. Whyte is a senior fellow of the CD Howe Institute, Senior Fellow at Massey College, and honorary lifetime alumnus of McGill. He has been chair of the Donner Canada Foundation, a director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and governor of The Aurea Foundation.  Mr. Whyte’s The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst was a Washington Post and L.A. Times book of the year. Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Sack of Detroit will be published by Knopf in 2021.