Sharon Scott was born in the Donovan. She is the fourth youngest of 14 children and her parents, and most of her family, still live in the Donovan. She has four children and a grand-daughter; her two youngest will be entering post secondary school in the fall. She spent some time in B.C. where she was an assistant manager and a book keeper at a grocery store. She is currently a driver for handi-transit but, in the past, she drove a school bus for special needs children. She volunteered for Our Children Our Future for 10 years, organizing activities for preschool children and prenatal nutritional information for expectant mothers. In her spare time, Sharon is an author and published a childrens story book in 2012. She is running for Ward 4 in Sudbury, ON.
Read moreElizabeth De Luisa
Born and raised in Sudbury, Elizabeth earned her Urban Planning Degree at Ryerson University in Toronto. She began her career as a Market and Housing Analyst with CMHC. While with CMHC, she moved to Halifax to assume the position of Senior Market and Housing Analyst and then to Saint John as Regional Strategic Planner. Later in her career she worked as a Planning Consultant, Her clients ranged from government, developers, non-profits, and private industry. She's worked on a broad range of projects, some of which include, land use plans, municipal strategic plans, housing affordability, recreation plans, ice allocations, and cycling infrastructure. She's written a number of FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) grant and loan applications and helped secure over $15million for the City of Saint John for their energy efficiency initiative. Elizabeth is the Executive Officer for the Sudbury Home Builders' Association, a non-profit that advocates for housing affordability. She lives in Ward 11, where she was raised, garden, creates art and cycle as a mean of transportation. Elizabeth is a mother of two boys. She is running to be the councilor for Ward 11 in Sudbury, ON.
Read moreStephanie Bernier
Stephanie Bernier is a 36 year old mother of two beautiful kids (18 and 15). She grew up in Timmins, but then moved to Cochrane by choice. She graduated grade 12 after having a baby at 17. She volunteers pretty much every chance she gets. From being on the carnival committee to a girl guide leader to even helping the army cadet corp, you can find Stephanie dedicating her time to a variety of local groups. She has wanted to join the town council for years and finally found the courage to make the leap this year. Stephanie is running for council in Cochrane, Ontario.
Read moreJohanne Brousseau
After her post secondary education, Johanne Brousseau was fortunate to find employment in her hometown and worked at Lee Jeans as a pattern maker. In 1986, the plant closed and she instead decided to open Creation Unique, creating employment for herself and others. After 22 years as an owner, Johanne sold her business and became a national freelance sewing educator. In the last 50 years, Johanne has been an active volunteer for various clubs and boards. From helping in the pool during swimming lessons to serving on local and regional boards, she has served on a variety of boards and committees in a variety of capacities, such as chair, vice-chair, treasurer, director, president, vice-president, secretary and instructor. She’s had the honor of being the recipient of several awards: Rising Star, Recognition, President’s List, Service and Certificate of Thanks. Johanne is running for Councillor in North Bay.
Read moreLisa Vezeau-Allen
Lisa Vezeau-Allen grew up and raised her young family in Sault Ste. Marie, received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Algoma University in 1994, and attained a Not-for-Profit Management post graduate degree in 2015 from St. Clair College in Windsor. Her work experience is varied: she has taught English courses at both St. Clair College and Sault College, supported the Big Brothers Association of Sault Ste. Marie in a finance and fundraising role and has led organizations as an Executive Director for both the Sault Youth Association and The Arts Council of Sault Ste. Marie and District. She currently leads the granting and fund development revenues as the Director of Fund Development for the YMCA of Boulder Valley via distance from her home in Sault Ste. Marie. Lisa has over 25 years experience in the Not-for-Profit sector and joined her first Board of Directors at the age of 18, and believes in giving back to community. She was honoured to receive the "Woman of the Week" recognition from the Business Professional Women's (BPW) organization in 2014 and was present at Queen's Park in 2010 to receive the Playworks Youth Friendly designation on behalf of the city of Sault Ste. Marie. Lisa is the proud mother of three sons, and shares her adventures of parenting a son on the Autism Spectrum at https://thepurplenote.blogspot.ca/. She is running for councillor of Ward 2 in Sault Ste Marie.
Read moreWhat We’re Doing to Get Women Elected
Election season is upon us
And we’ve been busy ...
As the election season creeps closer and close, we’ve been taking stock of the work that we’ve done to help prepare women run for municipal council and school board trustee. We’ve also been considering what we’ll be doing to support them through the election period itself.
Since spring of 2017, we've been busy offering programming and different resources to women in the North who want to run for council or school board trustee.
Nominations are being filed, and with an end of July deadline to file paperwork, we're gearing up to help the brave women who are running get elected.
So here’s our game plan
Campaign Fundamentals Webinar Series
Join us as we dive into the different aspects of campaigns with our upcoming webinar series. Did we mention it's free and that you can do this from the comfort of your own home? All you need is an internet connection and an hour to give us on Thursday nights in August.
All women candidates, female volunteers and people working on women candidate campaigns are welcome to join us. Webinars will be approximately 50 minutes in length with the option for a Q&A at the end. Please register for each webinar individually so that we can send you the proper link as the event approaches. We can't wait for you to join us!
August 9th: Crafting Your Story
August 16th: Canvassing
August 23rd: Fundraising with DemocracyKit
August 30th: Social Media & Your Campaign
#ElectNOW
We know how much difficulty women that are running have trying to get their stories told in the local media, and we want to change that. We'll be doing a weekly feature that will highlight women candidates running all over Northern Ontario on our blog. The interview will be Q&A style, and candidates can answer as little or as many questions as they would like to give their future constituents the opportunity to get to know them a little better. We'll then put that on our blog and share it on our Facebook page, Twitter page and our Instagram account. Candidates will have the chance to share it as they please. We'll also include a graphic that they can share. This blog post will be available on our website (http://www.polinow.org), where we will also have a designated candidate page that will include the candidate's picture and a link to the blog post. We're hoping to get as many women candidates in the North involved as possible.
Since June, we have been reaching out to the women filing their nominations in Northern Ontario’s 9 cities and sending out the survey to those who reach out to us. One of our goals here at PoliticsNOW is to amplify the voices of women, we think that a blog series featuring the women running in the North this is a perfect fit. We can’t do this alone, though - we need your help reaching out to women candidates. Not all cities have candidate information readily available online for us to reach out to the women running, and not all smaller communities have the internet capabilities to post it at all. This makes it hard to ensure we reach out to every single woman that is running. Know, though, that we are committed to amplifying and supporting all women candidates, and would appreciate being pointed in the right direction to find them. If you are a woman that is running in the upcoming election that hasn’t received an email from us but wants to be included in this endeavour, reach out to us.
Please note that these blog posts are not an endorsement. We want to give equal support, equal opportunities and equal voices to all women who are running. As a non-partisan organization, we have chosen to remain neutral in the election itself. We trust that voters will decide which candidate best fits with their vision for their school board, ward or town/city. Our goal is to use our platform to help women reach more constituents, as well as give citizens the opportunity to find which women are running for office in their region.
If this is something that interests you (or you know someone who would be a great feature), please don't hesitate to fill out this form to get in touch with us
Campaign Resources
We’ve been building our campaign resource page since our inception. Make sure that you check it out and take a look at all of the resources that we have created and curated from around the Internet. Feel like you need a little additional help? Email info@polinow.org to get connected with someone from our org who can offer a little extra one-on-one help.
Open to Suggestions
We're planning other activities and programs to help women in the North be able to run campaigns more effectively. If you'd like to have your say on what we do, or you have some great ideas, don't hesitate to let us know through this survey.
Thank you so much for helping us elect women in the North!
Don't forget to follow us on social media to get the latest from us and learn more about how you can help #ElectNOW.
