Jennifer - Chair
Jennifer has been a member of the York University community since 2003 and has had connections to the campus though family members since the mid-90s. She considers York University her home-away-from-home, having built life-long relationships throughout her academic (BCom ’08, BA ’11, M.Ed ’17) and professional career. She has worked in several administrative capacities in units across the campus including Printing Services, Schulich Executive Education Centre, Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change, Faculty of Health, and currently serves as National Recruitment Officer at the Office of the University Registrar. In her current role, she promotes the university across the country to attract prospective students to take-up their post-secondary studies at York. A true believer in life-long learning, Jenn is passionate about education, non-traditional approaches to teaching and learning, and is committed to approaching all her work through a lens of inclusivity, diversity and equity.
“It is only in the giving of oneself to others that we truly live. (Ethel Percy Andrus)” has been a guiding principle that has given much meaning to her life, allowing her to seek opportunities to make a positive impact in the lives of others. She relishes the opportunity serve, help and add value to people and projects by taking action with great love, empathy, and commitment. She is thrilled to volunteer as a board member of the Lee Wiggins Childcare Centre (LWCC) since Fall 2021, and looks forward to sharing her time, skills and creativity in this capacity.
Her daughter has happily attended LWCC since September 2021, thriving in the nurturing environment thanks to the dedication and care of the ECEs and staff. In her spare time, you'll find Jenn volunteering her skills and strengths to support projects and initiatives focused on social justice, and cultivating the values of kindness, generosity, respect and love to her life's most precious blessings – her daughter and husband.
Kyle - Treasurer
Kyle Fic, CPA, CA is a Partner at Lipton LLP, a professional services firm in Toronto. As the partner primarily responsible for implementing and executing the firm's system of quality management, Kyle plays a key role in ensuring the firm's engagements and deliverables are of the highest quality. Kyle has comprehensive knowledge and experience with Canadian accounting standards for private enterprises ("ASPE"), Canadian accounting standards for not-for-profit organizations ("ASNPO"), International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), Canadian generally accepted auditing standards ("GAAS") and Canadian generally accepted standards for review engagements.
Kyle has a broad range of public accounting experience, including auditing publicly listed and private entities, consulting on complex accounting and assurance matters, performing quality control reviews of financial statements and engagement files prior to issuance, facilitating professional development sessions and writing technical accounting publications for CPA Canada. He is also the Program Leader for the firm's pre-approved training program for CPA students and mentors them as they complete the practical experience component of becoming a CPA.
Kyle joined Lipton LLP in 2017 after spending the first eight years of his career at a big four accounting firm in assurance and professional practice roles. Kyle obtained his Bachelor of Commerce: Specialist in Commerce and Finance degree in 2009 from the University of Toronto, became a Chartered Professional Accountant ("CPA") in 2012, obtained his Public Accounting License in 2021 and became a Partner in 2024.
Kyle is currently a part-time practice inspector for CPA Ontario and a volunteer member of the Accounting Standards Board ("AcSB")'s Small Practitioners Working Group ("SPWG"). The SPWG assists the AcSB in identifying challenges with selecting accounting frameworks based on the Preface of the CPA Canada Handbook – Accounting, as well as how to scale the standards to improve relevance and useability for Canadian stakeholders.
In his spare time, Kyle enjoys spending time with his family, travelling, listening to hip-hop music and following basketball, particularly the Toronto Raptors.
Kelsey - Secretary
Kelsey, Ph.D., is a solo mom, proud member of CUPE 3903, and alumni of York University. As a sociologist, Kelsey is a fat studies researcher looking at the role of anti-fat bias in health care settings. Further, she is passionate about investigating the ways in which fat women experience discrimination related to motherhood, reproductive health care, and access to reproductive assistance. Kelsey’s two-and-a-half-year-old son currently attends Lee Wiggins, where he learns, grows, and has so much fun!
Mirco
Mirco is a father, partner, and the eldest brother of three. He speaks multiple languages - including Italian, English, French, Brazilian Portuguese, as well as some Kiswahili and Spanish- and has always been drawn to spaces that promote intercultural dialogue and transnationalism. After a life on the move around the world, he decided to return to Tkaronto/Toronto, a city that had left a mark on his early youth precisely because of its thriving cosmopolitan histories. In this space of unlikely yet fateful encounters, he met his wonderful partner on the picket line of the longest post-secondary strike in Canadian anglophone history, and together they became parents to a beautiful daughter, Malu, during a global pandemic.
At York University since 2016, he is a graduate Research Fellow at the Center for Refugee Studies (CRS) and an international Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Education. He holds a BA in Politics and African Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London (UK), an MA in Cooperation and Development Studies from La Sapienza University in Rome (Italy), and has experiences in both international and local NGO work as well as grassroots activism and mobilization. He is frantically attempting to finish his hyper-delayed-dissertation: a critical and reflexive account of his experiences as an educator in a master’s degree run by York University in one of the longest-standing and largest refugee camps in the world - the Dadaab Refugee Complex located in Northeastern Kenya. As a longstanding member of this same project, the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER), he has worked as a research assistant and has co-founded the Borderless Education Research Hub (BER-H), a space that aims to give institutional support and highlight/disseminate the research work of emerging refugee scholars and community organizations. His choice to work within the field of education is fueled by an aporia. On the one hand, a willingness to investigate the many ways that educational institutions continue to be implicated, epistemologically and ontologically, in the production of current global challenges. On the other hand, the desire to capture and explore the politics of hope, of the possible, that “risks” arising in/from any educational encounter.
His daughter will soon be turning four and has been happily attending Lee Wiggins since she was about 17 months. Both he and Thamara acknowledge and immensely appreciate how much each and every member of the LWCC community (from children to teachers and from volunteers to other parents) has contributed to their daughter's surprising and always exciting being.
ORIANA
Oriana, M.S.W., is a queer parent, social worker, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies program at York University. She is a plant studies researcher and is currently studying the ginseng plant (Panax quinquefolius) in North America. Oriana is very passionate about the necessity of access to quality and affordable childcare as an essential service to address social inequities. Oriana’s 18-month-old daughter attends (and loves) LWCC. After only a few months it has been amazing to see how much she has learned and grown!
LUIS
Luis currently serves as a Financial Analyst at Rise Kombucha. He is a seasoned Finance professional with a major in Finance and Capital Markets and a Master’s degree in Project Management and Evaluation, accumulating over 15 years of corporate finance experience. Luis has successfully led large-scale business deals in countries such as Colombia, Panama, and Mexico, working with both large-scale and Small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) for private companies and National and Local Governments. Notable in his professional journey is Luis’s role as a Board adviser to a University during the accreditation process in Colombia, strategic oversight of a chain of schools, and financial modeling for fundraising for a private childcare initiative. Luis, along with his family, relocated to Canada in August 2023, where his two children enjoy daily activities at the Lee Wiggins Centre. Outside of work, Luis relishes spending time with his family and friends, traveling the world, and participating in both real-life and video games soccer and basketball.
Shaney
I am a third year student at York University, I am presently completing a B.A is Children,childhood and youths studies. I have three children ages ten, five and one.