As a founding member of Oakview Coliving, Doug and his housemates seek to model an alternative to isolation or institutionalization, which is so often the forced choice faced by seniors. There is a third way!

Doug’s career included journalism, communications, not-for-profit management, web development, and government policy. He came late to his true calling, which is being retired, and in which he pursues writing, acting, and other forms of community engagement. His collection of humorous short stories, Tales from Wine on the Porch, showcases the adventures of co-living seniors.

Stéphane Alexis is a Canadian photo-based artist whose work stems from personal experiences, research, and community collaboration. He aims to foster a level of understanding to the often overlooked communities to which he relates, thus allowing these communities to better integrate with outer communities.

Alexis is a graduate from School of Photographic Arts, Ottawa (SPAO) and a recipient of numerous grants from The City of Ottawa, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. He was a selected artist for the 2022 Karsh Continuum Exhibition at Karsh-Masson Gallery in Ottawa City Hall and has exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions throughout Canada including the Workman Arts Festival. Alexis has had artworks acquired by various private collections and is represented in the public collections of the Canada Art Bank and Global Affairs Canada.

Alexis is currently working out of Ottawa and Toronto.

Bryan Keshen was appointed CEO of Reena May 2014 where he supports a team of over 700 employees providing services to over 1,000 individuals with diverse disabilities in over 30 locations throughout the Greater Toronto Area.

In his previous 24 years of Jewish Communal Service, Bryan worked at the Toronto and Vancouver Jewish Federations in a variety of roles including campaign, vice president of strategic planning and executive director of all three of Toronto’s Jewish Community Centers.

Bryan is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Master of Social Work and an advanced diploma in Social Service Administration. Bryan is an alumnus of York University’s concurrent education program with a B. Ed. and Hons BA in Judaic Studies and a Jewish Teaching Certificate.

Bryan is the co-chair of the Western York Region Ontario Health Team and sits on the Mackenzie Health President’s advisory community and the Vaughan Accessibility advisory committee.  Bryan also sits as a member of the Toronto Developmental Services Alliance, the Provincial Network on Developmental Services and Ontario Agencies Supporting Individuals with Special Needs (OASIS). He is chair of the Intentional Community Consortium which was dedicated to developing housing across Ontario for people with developmental disabilities, as well as chair of the OASIS Housing Work Group, co-chair of the Provincial Network’s Health Work Group and member of the ONTRAC committee.

Bev Foster is the founder and executive director of the Room 217 Foundation, a Canadian health arts social enterprise that uses music to improve the care experience. The goal of Room 217’s innovative care approach is to make music more integrated in care settings and personal care plans. A Community Research Fellow of the Laurier Centre for Music in the Community, Bev speaks and writes on the power of music, especially in life limiting situations. Her passion for music enhancing quality of life and care is contagious.

Carol has a unique mix of skills and experience in the healthcare system, spanning front-line clinician, educator, academic, leader and caregiver. She seeks to build and strengthen relationships, and engagement and partnership are central to her work.

Carol has led the co-development and co-delivery of programs and activities that focus on the needs and priorities of patients, caregivers, and communities, including Essential Together, a program that aimed to safely reintegrate essential care partners into health and care settings throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. A physical therapist by training, Carol also obtained a PhD at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto where her dissertation focused on patient engagement and storytelling for organizational learning and improvement.

Al Etmanski is a community organizer, writer and social entrepreneur. He and his late wife Vickie Cammack worked to nurture a culture that celebrates our reliance on each other, and that doesn’t take those giving and receiving care for granted.

Jane is currently a senior advisor at Environics Analytics.  Previously she was a senior advisor at Statistics Canada (2021-2023), developing a conceptual framework and data strategy on the care economy (including caregiving) to guide future data collection. Jane was formerly the assistant chief statistician of Social, Health and Labour Statistics at Statistics Canada.

Throughout her career, Jane has had responsibility for a range of social statistics, including data on health, caregiving, demography, education, labour, income, justice, gender, language, Indigenous peoples, immigration and diversity. Jane has extensive experience engaging with governments, researchers and non-profit organizations on data measurement and statistics. Currently, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Association of Canadian Studies, and for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES); and has also served on other boards such as for the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN).  In 2019, Jane was a co-recipient of the Mike McCracken Award in Economic Statistics.

Armine Yalnizyan is a leading voice on Canada’s economic scene. She is the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers and writes a bi-weekly business column for the Toronto Star. She served as a senior economic policy advisor to the federal Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development Canada in 2018 and 2019 and has been a member of a high-level task group on women in the economy convened by the federal Ministers of Finance and Middle Class Prosperity during the pandemic. Armine helped shape and advance the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Inequality Project from 2006 to 2016, provided weekly business commentary for CBC from 2011 to 2018, and served as Vice President and President of the Canadian Association for Business Economics from 2013-2019.

Jamie Penner is an instructor in the College of Nursing, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba and a PhD candidate at McGill University. With more than 20 years of experience in nursing practice, research, and education, Jamie is passionate about improving family caregiving literacy amongst healthcare students, educators, providers, and the broader community. She teaches undergraduate nursing courses in supportive and palliative care, and family health, and co-developed and teaches an interdisciplinary and intergenerational course in family caregiving across the lifespan.

Her program of scholarship is focused on working with communities and family caregivers to improve the caregiving experience and promote the health and wellbeing of family caregivers through the co-design, implementation, and evaluation of caregiver-friendly communities.

Driven by both personal and professional caregiving experiences, Jamie is deeply committed to advocating for family caregivers and educating and empowering all sectors of the community to engage in helping family caregivers thrive.

Karen Okrainec is a practicing general internal medicine physician at University Health Network and Health Services Scientist at Toronto General Research Institute in Toronto. Her research program focuses on identifying gaps for patients transitioning in and out of hospital and implementing new care models and tools.  She is the recipient of a CIHR Catalyst grant which seeks to understand how health care providers identify, recognize and support young caregivers in clinical practice with the goal of co-designing meaningful tools with caregiver organizations and young caregivers for health care systems and providers.