Joanie Cameron Pritchett

Joanie Cameron Pritchett has dedicated her life to gender equality, workers’ rights, democracy and social justice.  She is currently the Director of the Centre for Sexual violence Response, Support and Education at York University.

Her first experience in activism came during the 1990s, when she joined the Ontario Health Coalition, an organization dedicated to preserving universal health care in Canada.

Pritchett later became active in her workplace union, the York University Staff Association (www.yusapuy.org), and was elected president of the organization in January 2001 – December 2013  The union includes 2,500 workers on campus.

From 2009 – 2013, she was elected President of the Confederation of Canadian Unions (www.ccu-csc.ca), the largest association of independent unions in the country.

Pritchett’s progressive leadership style in both unions resulted in greater grass-roots participation from members, a surge in activism, and organizational renewal.  She initiated bold, new communications strategies and political education campaigns, while engaging new members like never before.   This is the leadership that Pritchett brings to all of the roles that she takes on.  She is a servant leader that approaches the work in a whole-hearted way to achieve the best possible outcome.

Pritchett believes that life-long learning is her trajectory and has leaned into her studies with an open mind and the desire to learn and unlearn along the way.

She has completed a Masters program in Alternate Dispute Resolution at Osgoode Hall Law School (LLM) and graduated in 2013 with a Masters in Leadership at the University of Guelph.  In addition, she has completed three Certificate Programs from York University in Alternate Dispute Resolution, Advanced Alternate Dispute Resolution and Family Mediation.

Always an optimist, Pritchett believes that in order to build a more fair and democratic world, now more than ever, we need to find creative solutions that are rooted in research to promote equality, fairness and kindness.

Joanie is looking forward to pursuing Doctorate at Royal Roads and to create a unique risk assessment tool for post secondary institutions (currently there is no such tool) to use to assess complaints of sexual violence and is excited to be on the campus one day to meet the peacocks in person.

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