Board of Directors 2010-2011

President

Sheila Barry
Children's Book Editor

Sheila Barry is a Toronto children's book editor with a particular interest in longer fiction and poetry. She was editor-in-chief at Kids Can Press for eight years and worked before that in educational publishing. Sheila has taught several publishing and editing courses at both York and Ryerson universities, and she speaks regularly at writers’ conferences.

Vice-President

Todd Kyle
CEO
Newmarket Public Library

Todd Kyle is an award-winning librarian known for his work on early literacy awareness, school-public library cooperation, and children’s literature and library services in both English and French. A frequent contributor to library conferences and training, Todd has taught with the Education Institute and at Seneca College, writes regular reviews for Canadian Materials, has served on the jury for the Silver Birch and Norma Fleck awards, and is currently on the jury for the TD French Canadian Children’s Literature Award. A former President of the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians, he was chosen as the OLA’s 2006 Children’s Librarian of the Year, and is currently CEO of Newmarket Public Library.

Treasurer

Leigh Chalmers
Partner
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

Leigh Chalmers is a partner in the Audit and Assurance practice working in PricewaterhouseCoopers Toronto office. She has a broad range of experience providing audit and advisory services to the financial service industry. Leigh specializes in the insurance and banking industries. Leigh also has experience serving on a number of large public company audits.

Leigh is currently involved in the development and implementation of PwC’s strategy for the new International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) related to the Canadian financial services industry. In this role Leigh works with the PwC Global IFRS committee to ensure Canadian clients are able to leverage from the global IFRS experience. In her IFRS role, Leigh is advising and educating clients on the new IFRS standards and helping companies develop an implementation project plan and strategy.

Leigh serves as the Chair to the Advisory Board for PwC’s Charitable Foundation. In this role Leigh oversees the management team responsible for the Foundation, recommends the strategic plan, monitors and evaluates the Foundations conduct, directions and results in accordance with the corporate objectives.

Board Members

Jean-Francois Bouchard
Group Publisher
Bayard Canada

Jean-Francois Bouchard has been the Group Publisher of Bayard Press Canada since July 2008. Prior to this, he was the Editorial Director of Bayard Canada Books (Youth books and Human Sciences) from 2004-2008. He was also the Associate Director of Novalis Publishing, as French Editorial Director, from 1993-2003.

Diane Davy
President
Castledale Inc.

Diane Davy is President of Castledale Inc, a consulting company specializing in the business side of the cultural industries. Her areas of expertise include business and strategic planning, corporate structure and management, revenue generation (including fund-raising and sponsorships), board governance, and other related topics.

Lisa Doucet
Co-Manager
Woozles Children's Bookstore

Lisa Doucet is the Co-Manager of Woozles Chilren's Bookstore in Halifax. In addition to reviewing for the CCBC's Canadian Children's Book News, Lisa also reviews for two other publications. Lisa is the co-chair of the Word on the Street Halifax board of directors and chair of the Nova Scotia Children's Literature Roundtable. In addition to her role as recording secretary for the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Association, Lisa also represents the Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association on the Atlantic Book Awards Society. She has also served as the IBBY Canada Councillor-East. Lisa is currently entering the last year of a five year term on the CLA YA Book of the Year Award jury and is the incoming chair on this committee. She has served on various award juries including the Halifax Mayor's Award for Excellence in Illustration and the IBBY Honour List selection committee. She is also involved with the Helen Creighton Folklore Society and has served as a volunteer teacher at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History for over ten years and has volunteered at Halifax Dance.

Sharon Jennings
Author

Sharon Jennings began her career in the publishing world as a textbook editor. Inspired by her children, she made the switch to author and has now written over 60 books for young people. Sharon teaches a course on writing for the children's market at Ryerson University in Toronto and is a frequent speaker in classrooms and libraries across Canada.

Charles McCarragher
Counsel
CIBC Legal Department

Charles is an experienced legal advisor who specializes in the areas of corporate and commercial law. Charles has particular expertise in advising private and public companies in the high technology industry. Charles past experiences include as a lawyer at one of Canada’s largest national law firms, as an information technology specialists and project manager with a multinational high technology company and as a business analyst for a microcredit lending institution. Charles regularly speaks at industry related events and remains actively involved with high technology community in Greater Toronto Area.

Susan McLennan
Communications Professional
Babble On Communications

A respected communications professional, Susan McLennan has helmed Babble On Communications, a boutique creative and public relations firm, for the last 15 years. Since 1998, Susan has been the publicity and brand consultant to television personalities Chris Kratt and Martin Kratt, the Kratt Brothers (from PBS/CBC’s Emmy Award-winning Zoboomafoo), whose shows are broadcast in 150 countries around the world. She is responsible for public relations and communications issues pertaining to the Kratt Brothers’ brand, including public and media appearances, including this year and last year’s show at Dollywood. Susan has developed and managed on behalf of the Kratt Brothers Company three US national tours with the Kratt Brothers and dozens of appearances with them across the US and Canada, helping to secure and manage 6 and 7 figure sponsorship deals. She has also secured and managed key media interviews across the US and Canada, including People Magazine, The View and The Today Show, where they appear regularly. In addition, Susan is a publicist for a variety of television series, specials and documentaries launching on North American stations and networks including PBS (The Sacred Balance), TVO (Spellz), Vision (Talk Mogadishu) and documentaries which were part of The Nature of Things.

Jo-Anne Naslund
Education Librarian
University of British Columbia

Jo-Anne Naslund currently works as an Education Librarian in the Education Library at the University of British Columbia. She has worked as a teacher and teacher-librarian in schools in Alberta, British Columbia and Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests focus on information literacy, teacher education, school libraries together with Canadian children's literature and adolescent reading interests. She has authored library publications and taught library courses in teacher-librarianship at the Universities of Melbourne, Alberta and British Columbia. Her educational background is a BA, BEd, MEd. and MLIS.

Felicia Quon
Director of Marketing
Simon & Schuster Canada

Felicia Quon is the Director of Marketing at Simon & Schuster Canada, where she oversees marketing communication strategy and directs the creative efforts of the marketing department team.

She has been involved with the publishing industry for 10 years, working across many aspects of the publishing process. Prior to joining Simon and Schuster Canada in 2006, Felicia was Director of Marketing (Children’s Books and Cookbooks) at HarperCollinsCanada and worked closely with children’s authors including Kenneth Oppel, Arthur Slade, Susan Juby, Natale Ghent and Janet McNaughton. She helped coordinate the inaugural HarperCollinsCanada/National Library of Canada Lecture Series at the International Conference on Canadian Children’s Literature in 2003 and brought in Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) as the first speaker.

Felicia is a graduate of the University of British Columbia with an English Major degree and has completed the Book and Magazine Publishing Diploma at Centennial College. She is a regular guest lecturer for the Children’s Marketing session at Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing Program and lectured at the Simon Fraser University Summer Publishing Workshop Program in 2009.

She has been a volunteer literacy tutor at the Cecil Community Centre in Toronto for many years and consults with several not-for-profit organizations for marketing and publishing queries. She is also a regular participant in industry and marketing events such as BookNet Tech Forum, Book Summit and Podcamp.

Itah Sadu
Owner
A Different Booklist

Itah Sadu is an internationally-known storyteller, author and keynote speaker. She is one of Canada’s best loved storytellers, and captures the imagination of children and adults alike, as she weaves her particular brand of “Stories of Our Time.” Itah’s knowledge of community economic development, and her entrepreneurial background, led her to be one of the architects of the successful Fresh Elements and Fresh Arts program, which produced Canadian recording artists like Saukrates, Jully Black and Kardinal Offishall. She remains deeply involved in community development in her hometown of Toronto, has a solid background working with children, young adults, and educators, and likes to lay emphasis on the incontrovertible fact that Black woman are, and always have been, a driving force in any market economy.

A former Vice-President of the Black Business & Professional Association, Itah is the co-owner of the successful Canadian bookstore A Different Booklist, located in downtown Toronto. Her knowledge of the publishing industry as an author, and her entrepreneurial drive, have enabled Itah and her husband, Miguel San Vicente, to position the bookstore in a transformative role in society. In fact they have made A Different Booklist a household name in the Caribbean and African-Canadian communities.

A Different Booklist has actively brought attention to Caribbean and African Canadian writers and their work, as well as visiting African-American writers, and hosts about 15 book launches a year. Virtually every important Storyteller and author, or up-and-coming Black of West Indian writer in Toronto and beyond has chosen to have a book launched at A Different Booklist, as have such luminaries as bell hooks, Jan Carew, Austin Clarke, Olive Senior, the late Johnnie Cochran and Michael Eric Dyson. She takes great pride in the fact that all of the staff who were with her at the bookstore 10 years ago are still part of the A Different Booklist family.

She has received several awards over the years including, the Toronto Arts Council Foundation Award 2004, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario Award 2007 for Children’s Literature the African-Canadian Achievement Award for Business and The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists Business Award 2008.