Cheryl Hotchkiss – December 13th

I grew up in Southern Ontario and spent most of my years supporting my family’s dairy and beef farm until university. I have been working in the social justice advocacy field for 25 years with experience ranging from local community advocacy projects to international advocacy campaigns. My career began with Amnesty International Canada where I was the lead campaigner on three themes – women’s human rights, human rights in Asia and business and human rights.

A key highlight of my time with Amnesty was my work on a team that researched a pattern of violence committed against Indigenous women in some of Canadians major urban areas. This ground breaking research and resulting campaign, grabbed national and international attention and has contributed to a number a initiatives in Canada at the municipal, provincial and federal levels to get a firm grasp of the problem, the scope of it and the solutions.

In 2008, I moved to World Vision Canada to help them build their advocacy campaigning and public engagement capacity. In my nine years with World Vision, I have lead campaigns on child health, children in conflict and the worst forms of child labour which includes encouraging Canadians to be more ethical consumers.

My passion is to motivate and support Canadians to be active citizens in local, national and international issues. I believe we all have a deep need and desire to be compassionate and empathetic particularly towards marginalize populations. But we lack accurate information and ideas for how to support marginalized populations effectively.

I am currently Senior Director, Public Engagement at World Vision Canada. I have BA in History and Political Science with a focus on diplomatic and international relations from Carleton University as well as an MA in Human Systems Intervention from Concordia University. My life outside of work involves managing a family home and raising two teenagers who provide me with no end of entertainment and work!