Event Committee

Sharon Goulet

Sharon has been an active Aboriginal community worker and representative since 1998. She received her Master’s in social work at the University of Calgary in November 2005. She is currently a member of the Calgary Family and Community Support Services, where she plays an active role as a social planner and funder. She coordinates the development, allocation and evaluation of a joint municipal/provincial funding program to establish, support and fund preventive social services. As a manager for the Aboriginal agencies in Calgary, she is involved in social planning and capacity development initiatives. She collaborates directly with various Aboriginal agencies, to better understand the magnitude of social issues facing the Aboriginal community and to effectively develop strategies to best to respond to them. She also serves as the chair of the Provincial FCSS Aboriginal Advisory, which is a newly formed group that is dedicated to advocating for systemic and structural changes to how Aboriginal agencies in Calgary report, measure and evaluate their programs.

Linda McCracken

Linda McCracken has 40 years of nursing experience, 32 of which were in rural and urban emergency rooms. She also received a full certificate in Forensic Studies from Mount Royal University and serves as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. Linda championed healthcare provider training across the province on universal screening for domestic violence and sexual assault since 2001. She is a core educator in the Alberta Health Services (AHS) Calgary Zone on Domestic Violence Intervention, acute care & community and she developed a Train-the-Trainer curriculum for the Calgary Zone Maternal & Child Health portfolio and sexual assault response training for the Victim Assistance Unit of the Calgary Police Services and the Victim Services of the RCMP in rural Alberta. Also, Linda has been published in an emergency and forensic nursing journal on the forensic aspects of trauma care. In 2007 Linda became the Domestic Violence Program Coordinator for AHS-Calgary Zone. She received the 2012 Government of Alberta Inspiration Award on Leadership in Family Violence Prevention as well as an Honorary Lifetime Award for longtime service and contributions to the National Emergency Nurses Affiliation of Canada. In addition, Linda serves as a consultant for frontline staff and various AHS clinical policy/procedures and guideline domestic violence working groups and Workplace Health & Safety required operational practices committees.

Josie Nepinak

Josie Nepinak is the Executive Director of Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society, the only aboriginal urban women’s shelter in Alberta, and has a strong 25 year background steeped in complex, social issues working with Aboriginal organizations and advocating for aboriginal women and families affected by family violence. She has a degree in Women's Studies with a graduate studies in Management. Josie is Anishinabe from the treaty four area and believes in a balanced approach, with teachings of Aboriginal wisdom and healing in combination with contemporary western methodologies in promoting the health and well-being of First Nations, Inuit and Métis individuals, families and communities. Josie brings focus, clarity, creativity and inspiration to ensure Awo Taan Healing Lodge Society achieves results.

Nicole Letourneau

Dr. Letourneau holds a Norlien/Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation Research Chair in Parent-Infant Mental Health and is Research Coordinator of RESOLVE Alberta; her CHILD Studies Program develops and tests interventions that support the development of vulnerable infants, children and youth. Program subjects include the impact of variables--parent-child relationship quality, supportive relationships, family violence, and parental mental health outcomes--on children’s health and development. The focus is on the relationship between protective factors of quality parent-infant/child relationships and social support. The program seeks to improve health and developmental outcomes for at-risk children via support interventions but also to understand how psychosocial interventions function to improve outcomes. Dr. Letourneau’s research promotes understanding of the relationship among social (caregiving) experiences, neural and endocrine systems, and children’s cognitive and social development.

Lorraine Radtke

Lorraine Radtke, first appointed in 1982, is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology. Over the years, she has taught courses in a number of different areas, including statistics, research design, introductory psychology, and social psychology. Currently, however, her teaching focuses primarily on Psychology of Gender and Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology. For the 2013-2014 academic year, she will serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology. Other administrative posts have included Associate Head, Department of Psychology and Associate Dean (Student Affairs and Academic Programs), Faculty of Social Sciences. Her research interests centre on the psychology of women. She is the Alberta academic provincial coordinator for the Healing Journey project, a longitudinal study of women living in the Prairie Provinces, who have experienced intimate partner abuse. Data collection for this project is completed, but data analysis is ongoing. She is also a member of an interdisciplinary research team conducting a randomized controlled trial of an educational intervention aimed at young women at university, a group that is known to be at high risk of sexual assault. The intervention is aimed at reducing completed sexual assault rates, and participants will be followed for up to two years after they complete the program. Other research interests include mothering and women’s identities in relation to discourses of femininity and feminism.

Deb Tomlinson

With over 30 years working in senior leadership roles in the not for profit sector, the focus of Deb Tomlinson’s career has centered in the areas of sexual assault/abuse and domestic violence. Most recently, Ms. Tomlinson was Project Development Manager of Connect Family and Sexual Abuse Network where she led a group of diverse multidisciplinary stakeholders in the development of a new collaborative model of service aimed at increasing access to services for people affected by both domestic violence and sexual assault/abuse. Prior to this, Ms. Tomlinson held senior management roles with Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse, Three Trilliums Community Place, the Cheshire Homes Foundation and the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres. Ms. Tomlinson is passionately committed to addressing the issues of sexual assault and sexual abuse. She previously held the position of Provincial Coordinator for the former Alberta Association of Sexual Assault Centres (AASAC) from 1999 to 2006. A significant accomplishment during her tenure was the successful acquisition of provincial government funding for specialized sexual assault services in the province - a first for Alberta.

As of May 15, 2013, Ms. Tomlinson will resume her work with AASAS (Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services), this time as Chief Executive Officer. She is very excited to once again have the opportunity to lead the province, raising awareness about sexual abuse and sexual assault, and ensuring access to services and support for those many Albertans whose lives are affected.