Sarah M. Beam-Borg

Exhibition Manager / Assistant Curator, The Bata Shoe Museum

Sarah Beam-Borg brings curatorial, educational, project management and footwear history experience to the position of Exhibition Manager / Assistant Curator at the Bata Shoe Museum. She received an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Waterloo, a Museum Management and Curatorship Diploma from Sir Sandford Fleming College and an Honours Bachelor of Education from Lakehead University.

She started her time at the Bata Shoe Museum in 1997 as a curatorial/conservation intern and was hired on completion of the placement as the Collections Manager, eventually working up to the position of Exhibition Manager and Assistant Curator. In that time she has worked extensively with the BSM collection doing research, artifact handling and preparation, exhibition planning and installation, copy writing and editing for galleries and publications, lecturing, coordinating inter-institutional loans, project management and media interviews.

Sarah combines her interests in world cultures with a fashion enthusiasm that makes for a perfect fit. 

 

Diane Boyer

is a Fine Arts graduate of York University and is currently pursuing a masters degree in Museum Studies at the University of Toronto. In the summer of 2010, Diane participated in the writing of an interpretive plan for Todmorden Mills Heritage Site, and the development of interpretive materials to broaden understanding of the site's sometimes complex industrial history. Diane has worked for many years in community and urban neighbourhood economic development, and is on an educational leave of absence from her position in the development office of the Art Gallery of Ontario. [email protected]

 

Clark Bernat

Managing Director, Niagara Historical Society and Museum

Born in St. Catharines, Clark holds an undergraduate degree in History from Brock University and continued his studies at the University of Leicester, completing a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies which included a placement at Belgrave Hall in Leicester, his dissertation entitled “Upon Further Review: Black History in Community Museums after Into the Heart of Africa”, development of the Leicester Museum Services’ children’s component of their website and participation in a Museums Association initiative to improve Cultural Diversity in Museums. Since graduation, Clark has worked at Battlefield House Museum, Backus Heritage Village, been on the Steering Committee of the Children’s Discovery Centre of Niagara and Chaired Doors Open Niagara. He has been with the Niagara Historical Society since October 2001. Currently Clark is the Chair of the Museums of Niagara Association.

 

Jennifer Brunelle

Historical Interpreter, Simcoe County Museum

Jennifer Brunelle has been a museum educator for several years, working at Ste. Marie Among the Hurons in Midland, and at the Simcoe County Museum.  She has worked for the Simcoe County Museum as Historical Interpreter since 2004.  Jennifer has a strong interest in sharing our local history through storytelling and public programming.  An accomplished musician and artisan, Jennifer creates handcrafted leather items, and some of her handiwork is featured in the Simcoe County Museum’s Orientation Gallery.

 

M. Christine Castle

Consultant, Museum Education & Interpretation

Chris is a museum education and interpretation specialist. With passion and commitment, she has helped museum professionals, students and volunteers worldwide to develop informal learning solutions for museums, galleries, historic sites, parks and other sites. Dr. Castle's monthly e-newsletter Museum Education Monitor connects and informs the global museum community, and she is a respected speaker, writer and peer advisor across Canada and the U.S. For more info, please see http://www.mccastle.com

 

John Dalrymple

Manager, Major Gifts, Canada's National Ballet School

John Dalrymple is a museum consultant specializing in fundraising and new media development.  Previously John has worked at the Royal Ontario Museum as a Project Manager and since 2001 at the Textile Museum of Canada (TMC). John was a leader at the TMC, holding the positions of Project Manager, Web Designer, Development Manager, Director of Development and Acting Executive Director. John has also played a leadership role in the advancement of the Museum’s digitization and new media/Web programming.

He earned a Specialized Honours B.A. in Anthropology from York University in 1998 and a Masters of Museum Studies degree from the University of Toronto in 2001. John has conducted anthropological and archaeological fieldwork in Belize, Peru and Canada and has published works on museology in a number of academic and arts based publications.

John’s work has been recognized through awards from the Canadian Museums Association, American Association of Museums and the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. John sits on the governing Council of the Ontario Museum Association and the Canadian Conference of the Arts Awards Committee.

 

Madelyn Della Valle

Curator, Windsor’s Community Museum

Madelyn Della Valle received a BA in Anthropology from McGill and a Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. Currently Curator at Windsor’s Community Museum, Madelyn has presented at conferences for the Ontario Museum Association, the Canadian Museum Association, as well as the Association of American Museums and the Ontario Archaeological Association, on topics ranging from collection storage to exhibitions to multicultural civic engagement. She was the also the chair of the Ontario Museum Association Conference in Windsor in 1996 and has written several published articles, including “The Story of a Big Exhibit in a Little Space”, and “Sherds on the Shelf & Arrowheads in the Attic: Issues with Archaeological Collections in Smaller Museums in Ontario”. In 2009, following an unplanned 101-day diversion while walking the line as part of a municipal strike, Madelyn completed her work as Managing Editor of a book on the Italian community of Windsor entitled Impronte: Italian Imprints in Windsor.

 

Nicole Drake

Fund Development Officer, Brant Historical Society

Nicole Drake is currently the Fund Development Officer for the Brant Historical Society, which operates the Brant Museum & Archives, Myrtleville House Museum and Museum-in-the-Square.  Previously, she served as Manager/Curator of the Secrets of Radar Museum in London, Ontario.  Nicole holds a B.A. from the University of Waterloo and an M.A. from McMaster University, where she focused on historic Canadian archaeology.  She has been involved in the museum community since 2005, and is working towards her OMA Certificate in Museum Studies.  She also spends a lot of time using social media.

 

Loren Fantin

Project Manager, Our Ontario / Knowledge Ontario

Loren Fantin is the Project Manager for Our Ontario, the component of Knowledge Ontario that develops digital toolsets and search technologies.  Our Ontario is currently partnering with over 200 organizations, delivering services designed to make Ontario content digital, discoverable and sharable by the digital generation. Her professional experience has been focused on projects and initiatives that lead to greater access to our collections – our culture, our history and our stories - in the networked world. Loren is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Masters in Library and Information Science, and as an Adjunct Professor has taught courses on online descriptive tools.

 

Gale Fewings

Curator, Hutchison House Museum

Gale Fewings graduated from Trent University in Peterborough with a B.A. in Anthropology/Cultural Studies in the late 1980s. It was through her experience at university that she became interested in all forms of culture, be it the arts, material culture, or social culture. Therefore, it wasn’t surprising that she found herself working in professional theatre as a props coordinator/set dresser and at Hutchison House Living History Museum as an historic interpreter. Gale has been involved with Hutchison House since 1991 in a variety of roles. She became the administrator/curator of Hutchison House Museum in 1999.

 

Patricia Fiori

Consultnat, Linke Fiori Services

Patricia Fiori has worked in the heritage field for most of her life. Beginning as an Assistant Curator for the Regina Plain Museum, she applied her degree in Indian Studies to the design and production of the first permanent exhibition for the museum on the history and culture of Saskatchewan Plains Indian culture. In 1990 Patricia joined the Museums Association of Saskatchewan as the Director of Learning responsible for all training and development programs and materials for the Association. During that time she also collaborated with her education colleagues from Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario to form the interprovincial Learning Coalition. Patricia’s passion for development at the individual, organizational and community level, and her belief in the value of heritage lead her to form her own company, Linke Fiori Services, with her husband in 2009.

 

David Harkness

Marketing and Communications Officer, Canadian Heritage Information Network

David Harkness is an online museum professional with nearly a decade of experience in educational Web projects. He is the current Marketing and Communications Officer for the Virtual Museum of Canada at the Canadian Heritage Information Network, and is actively involved in the planning and implementation of the VMC’s social media strategy. Prior to this position, he was Team Lead, Web for large-scale digitization projects at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, and Project Coordinator, interviewer, audio engineer, and IT & Web development contractor for the Dominion Institute (now the Historica-Dominion Institute). 

David holds an Honours B.A., archaeology specialist, and a Master’s degree in museum studies, both from the University of Toronto. He has lectured, presented or published on social media, viral marketing, web conferencing, virtual exhibit project management, digitization and digital asset management, museum careers, and Canadian archaeology for a wide range of audiences.

 

Sally Hughes

Senior Lecturer in Publishing, Oxford Brookes University

Sarah Anne (Sally) Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. She has completed a Masters Degree in Museum Studies at University of Leicester in 2005 where she studied publishing by regional UK museums for her unpublished dissertation. In addition to Brookes teaching responsibilities, she is currently writing up her doctoral research (with University of Leicester) and again in museum publishing. For this extended study, she conducted a research project using interviews and questionnaires with staff and visitors of the Wellcome Collection and the National Gallery in London. In this study she investigated the purposes of publishing for museums and the motivations of visitors in buying museum books. An early paper from this work is published by Electronic Press at Linkoping University Electronic Press (http://www.ep.liu.se/www.linkoping.se).  She has a chapter in National Museums: New Studies around the World (Knell et al., Routledge, in press) on the presentation of the British Museum as a universal museum as evidenced in its publications.

 

Sheila Johnson

has worked in the museum’s sector for the past 25 years, 18 of those as the Curator of the Woodstock Museum National Historic Site and the past eight as the Executive Director of Fanshawe Pioneer Village in London, Ontario.  She is a history graduate of the University of Western Ontario and is currently completing her Diploma in Cultural Resource Management from the University of Victoria in B.C. Sheila and her husband Don have three daughters and live in an 1856 former Presbyterian manse in Embro, Ontario.

 

Madeleine Lafaille

Heritage Information Analyst, Canadian Heritage Informaton Network

Madeleine Lafaille is a Heritage Information Analyst with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). She has worked within the museum field for the past 25 years. She is a specialist in museum collections documentation and management. Within this area of expertise, she has worked on the development and application of metadata and vocabulary standards for computerized museum collection information. She has implemented programs and supervised numerous projects, as well as taught courses and workshops dealing with the creation and management of digital heritage content.

After completing a B.A. in History and Anthropology, Madeleine Lafaille obtained a Museology Master’s degree at the Université de Montréal. More recently, she has pursued research on knowledge organization systems for museum collections and digital heritage content. This interest extends to the semantic interoperability of online content, as well as the convergence of information between library, archival and museum collections.

 

Valerie Lapp

Valerie Lapp Communications

Val loves the stories that museums tell, and loves to help museums tell them. She has been developing successful marketing, publicity and communications strategies for over 25 years, and has presented marketing concepts and solutions to students in the OMA's CMS program and U of T's Museum Studies program. For the past four years, she has consulted with the OMA on communications tools and strategies, and currently teaches marketing at Durham College. For more information visit http://www.valerielapp.com

 

Sarah Maloney

Registrar, Port Colborne Historical & Marine Museum

Sarah recently completed her Masters in Public History at the University of Western Ontario. She was hired by Brock University in August 2009 to complete the 1812history.com digitization process. Since, she has also completed some consulting work for museums who are considering the digitization of their collections. Sarah is currently working at the Port Colborne Historical & Marine Museum as a Registrar and as a Digital Project Coordinator at the Niagara Historical Society & Museum.

 

Barbara McIntosh

Volunteer, Hutchison House Museum

Education:
- Degree in Journalism, Ryerson University
- Certificate in Arts Management, Banff School of Management
Professional Experience:
- Retired Ontario Public Servant
- 16 years as Marketing and Communication Coordinator, Ontario Heritage Trust
- Experienced Strategic Communications Planner and Project Manager
Current Activities:
- Board Member of Peterborough Historical Society
- Volunteer at Hutchison House Museum, Peterborough
- Board Member, Heritage Pavilion Stage Theatre Company, Peterborough

 

Helene Moussa

Curator, St. Mark's Coptic Museum

Since July 1999, Helene Moussa has been serving as the Volunteer Curator at St. Mark’s Coptic Museum, fulfilling a life long passion for art and the study of culture, identity and history. 

Prior to that, she spent 30 years teaching sociology, social work and social development in universities in Egypt, Ethiopia and Canada, and was the  Dean of the School of Social Work, Haile Selassie I University, Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia (1958-1967).  Helene has also completed 22 years ecumenical work (14 of which included academic teaching as above) in the US, Canada and at the World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland where she served as Executive Secretary for Uprooted People (refugees and internally displaced persons) in the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific Islands (1994–1998).

Helene has published numerous books and articles in professional journals in areas of education, social work, international development and refugee and internally displaced persons.  For the past 27 years, the main focus of her publications has been on refugees and internally displaced women and children. The most recent was in June 2008: Not Born A Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices. Co-edited with Professors Maroussia Hajdukowski-Ahmed and Nazilla Khanlou. Published by Berghahn Books: New York, Oxford.

 

Katrina Pyke, Coordinator, Museum Operations, Pickering Museum Village

Katrina has a Masters of Public History degree from the University of Waterloo and a passion for inspiring others through innovative programming. Pickering Museum Village, a living history site of 16 buildings, has won awards for its education, public, and volunteer programs. A recent partnership with University of Toronto Museum Studies students has resulted in the first draft of a comprehensive interpretative plan for the Museum Village. [email protected]

 

John Ryerson

Director of Culture, Town of Markham

As Director of Culture  he is building Markham’s first culture plan with a strong emphasis on relationship building and broad engagement. Markham  has been investing in culture with a new Markham Museum collections and exhibition building coming on stream next year  as a LEED Gold building, and an expansion at the Varley Gallery.  Markham, at a population of ca. 300,000 is Canada’s most ethnically diverse  with over 57% not born in Canada.

Previously John was Director of the Varley Art Gallery completing his career there with The Automatiste Revolution exhibition that also toured to the Albright Knox Gallery. The exhibition was ranked by the Globe and Mail and Canadian Art magazine as Canada’s number one show in 2009.   He was Chief Operating Officer at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and project manager of its several of its most successful exhibitions. Prior to McMichael he worked for 10 years at the Ontario Ministry of Culture in support of its cultural agencies and major cultural capital projects across Ontario.  

 

Carolle Séguin

Audience Development Officer, City of Ottawa

Twelve years of experience as a community developer and fundraiser with the Orleans Community Resource Centre have given Carolle an in-depth understanding of the Ottawa community and local organizations. Carolle uses this insight to develop strategies for attracting and retaining audiences by identifying audience needs and barriers to participation. 

 

David Sharron

Head of Special Collections and Archives, Brock University

David Sharron is the Head of Special Collections and Archives in the James A. Gibson Library at Brock University.  He holds a Masters degree in History with an Archives Specialization and is a certified archivist.  David has been working in the archival administration and library fields for over 12 years.  He has had diverse experiences working with archival records and books beginning with a federal institution at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to a municipal / community archives at the Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre in Southampton, Ontario, and now at a post-secondary institution - Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.

 

Kelley Swift Jones

Curator, Simcoe County Museum

Kelley Swift Jones is the Curator for the Simcoe County Museum in Minesing, Ontario.  Since 1992, she has worked at the Simcoe County Museum in a variety of roles, including Historical Interpreter, Curatorial Assistant and Education Director.  A graduate of McMaster University in Hamilton, Kelley holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and is a recent graduate of the Certificate in Museum Studies program.

At the Simcoe County Museum, Kelley focuses on building community partnerships and creating effective programming and educational opportunities in order to sustain and strengthen the Simcoe County Museum’s role as a key community partner.

 

Gloria Taylor

Director/Curator, Orillia Museum of Art & History

Professional positions and affiliations:

• Member of the Simcoe County Archives, Art Galleries and Museums Group
• Washago Women’s Institute Member
• Member of the Orillia District Art Council
• Former member and Curator for the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto
• Member of the Ontario Museum Association and Life Member and former Museum Board member of the Ontario Historical Society
• Co-founder and member of the Hwy 12 Day Tripping Group
• Married to Stephen Taylor, one child 17 year old Alexander

 

Katie Urban

Education and Community Relations Officer, Museum of Ontario Archaeology

Katie Urban is currently the Education and Community Relations Officer at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.  She is the author of the recently published MUSE article, "Online Social Media: Who are You Reaching?"  Katie holds a M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, UK, and a B.A. in Classical Archaeology from Wilfrid Laurier University.  She has been involved in the museum community since 2002.

 

Dany Vallerand

Communications and Marketing Membership Advisor, Canadian Heritage Information Network

Dany Vallerand is Communications and Marketing Membership Advisor for the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN). He has built his experience in the communication and marketing departments of: the Musée d’Orsay (Paris), the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia), and the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto). 

As a trainer, he regularly collaborates with provincial museums associations and the Canada School of Public Service. He previously worked as a communications professional and project leader in the Université du Québec network where he created and gave training (in situ and online) for many organizations, such as École Nationale d’administration publique (ENAP), Télé-Université, Collège ÉducaCentre and Centre d’expertise SAVIE, among others. In 2006, he received the National Assembly of Québec medal as a team member of the project ENJEUX. 

He worked also for Radio-Canada where he was a cultural reporter and interviewer, from 1999 to 2004. He also coordinated projects with the CRPLF (Community of Public French Speaking Radios: France, Belgium, Switzerland, Canada). 

He collaborated on two books published in 2009: Mémoire de Mémoires(Les Presses de l’Université Laval) and Jeux et Simulations Éducatifs(Presses de l’Université du Québec). 

Dany Vallerand holds Master’s degrees in Communications and in Administration, both from Université Laval (Québec).

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