Women of Distinction

Adonia is a proud Afro-Indigenous young woman of 15 years who hails from Flying Post First Nation. Believing in the transformative power of education and inclusion, Adonia pursued advocacy through a unique avenue, pageantry. She was the first Afro-Indigenous winner of the Sudbury Youth Ambassadors pageant and the Miss Teen Ontario Regional Canada and has used these stages to call attention to the need for mental health, cultural, and educational resources and supports to empower BIPOC youth with her platform called the BIPOC Plan: One Voice, One Mission.

At school, Adonia demonstrates exceptional enthusiasm towards learning and utilizes every opportunity to expand her knowledge and support her peers. Her determination and organizational skills help her balance academic excellence, where she consistently earns high grades, with extracurriculars including badminton, bowling, track & field, refereeing, and coaching elementary volleyball. She is also highly involved in the Marymount Melanin Club, creating awareness and opportunities to embrace culture from diverse populations among her peers, as a member/Indigenous liaison of Black Lives Matter Sudbury, and the Youth Advisory Council with COMPASS and Youth Wellness Hub. During this summer 2024, she was accepted to and joined the Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Foundation Youth Ambassador Program to continue building her impressive leadership skills.

Adonia’s passion for equality and positive change fuels her future goal of becoming a Crown Attorney and eventually a Superior Court Judge, where she hopes to use her position to combat the victimization of BIPOC peoples brought about by the MMIWG2S+ crisis and the over-representation of incarcerated Indigenous men.

As you can see, Adonia is strong, perseverant, and compassionate. She is not afraid to take risks to reach her goals and is adaptable in the face of challenges. Her advocacy journey has just begun, and she has already made changes to people’s perception of BIPOC youth, including empowering said youth themselves to be proud of who they are.

Holding a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a diploma in Social Gerontology, Chantal’s educational background coupled with her numerous certificates in leadership, project management, and volunteer administration, has positioned her to affect great change in our community.

As the CEO of Spark Employment Services, her guidance and strategic planning expertise were instrumental in securing seven (7) new funding agreements within five (5) years leading to a substantial 40% increase in staffing capacity. This has enabled the organization to not only nurture its diverse workforce through a culture of respect, compassion, and inclusion, but also provide exceptional client-centered service that opens doors for women to access employment opportunities, making a tangible difference in promoting greater independence and economic empowerment.

For Chantal, it is always about the people. She ignites pathways for women, sharing her knowledge to help them navigate their personal and professional journeys to achieve greater success. She is deeply committed to mentoring, coaching and supporting others as evidenced through her involvement with the Girl Guides of Canada and Imperfection Lives Here, an organization dedicated to uplifting women to embrace and create the best version of themselves. Chantal’s volunteer work, past & present, also includes sitting on the Board of Directors at Health Sciences North and Sudbury Women’s Center, as well as giving her time with the Special Education Advisory Committee, Sudbury Elder Abuse Committee, the School Board and Valley KMAC.

She is an exemplary wife and mother of two young adults. Having been diagnosed with and resiliently adapted to living with Eosinophilic Gastroenteritis, a rare auto-immune illness, Chantal is no stranger to adversity and overcoming challenges by using her “positivity muscle”. Her strength of character, extraordinary optimism, and relentless spirit serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration to those around her.

Dr. Linda served the community of Sudbury as a family doctor for almost four (4) decades, until her retirement from clinical practice in 2022. She led a varied career within the scope of family practice, spending the last two (2) decades practicing palliative medicine and played an important role in its development in our community.  She continues non-clinical practice through her involvement with educating students at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine University (NOSMU).

As a founding member of Nickel City Aquatics (NCA) in 2007, Dr. Linda played a pivotal role in its establishment and subsequent growth from a modest group of 26 swimmers to one of the largest competing clubs in Northern Ontario, including over 125 youth athletes and 16 Masters Swimmers. She is a Level 4 swim official and Level 2 coach and invests sometimes up to 60 hours a week on a completely volunteer basis to mentor young swimmers and junior coaches, plan practices and attend out-of-town meets, including the Swim for Hospice fundraiser, and manage various key administrative duties. She has a profound positive impact in the lives of young swimmers, imparting not only invaluable health expertise which helps them establish good habits and relationships with nutrition, but also life-long skills outside the pool such as self-care, goal setting, perseverance, and commitment. Her selfless leadership in the NCA earned her recognition with Swim Ontario’s Lea Bredschneider Award in 2021 and the Clifford Barry Follow Your Heart Excellence Award in 2023.

Dr. Linda shows how powerful representation can be. She is an outstanding role model in medicine and a compassionate and approachable coach and mentor, providing individualized support that meets the unique needs of girls so that they can continue to participate in sport and grow in the way that is best for them. She inspires youth and fuels their determination, ambition, and belief in themselves to achieve great things.

Samantha is an active and engaged mother, Anishinaabe from Wasauksing First Nation on Parry Island, a devoted ally advocating for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in science research, and a change maker at work and in her community. She began blazing a trail in Science, Engineering, Trades & Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedicine followed by graduate studies in Science Communication and has spent the past 15 years in various roles at SNOLAB, as is now the Corporate Services Director. Always open to and wanting to learn new and better ways to do things, Samantha completed her Master of Science in Management with a focus on EDI at major research infrastructures in Canada in 2021, after nearly a decade in the field and with young children.

In 2019, she spearheaded SNOLAB’s EDI Task Force, and this year received a grant to support relations and sharing with Indigenous peoples by welcoming Indigenous Knowledge Keepers and Indigenous ways of knowing into her work and practices. She takes time to visit local classes to help shift the idea of what a scientist looks like so that young women and girls can see themselves in STEM. Samantha has made many contributions in our community through her volunteer work as the Vice-Chair of the Northern Cancer Foundation, with Health Sciences North, and with Health Sciences North Research Institute. She received a 40 under 40 award in 2015, has been a speaker at TedEd, has been published for her work on EDI and was recognized for her impact locally by WISE Sudbury and She&Her.

Samantha is always working to find ways to improve the experiences of others and widen decision-making circles to be more inclusive. She is open-minded, tenacious, and believes in the potential of others, supporting and encouraging them to take on new challenges.

Sherri’s passionate involvement in the community spans not only in her impressive volunteerism, but also her dedicated work, first in multiple roles with the City of Greater Sudbury, Games Coordinator for the Ontario Senior Games, and Director of the Youth & Preschool programming at YMCA Sudbury. She then became Project Manager & Community Development Officer at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM), and is now back at the City of Greater Sudbury as a Community Development Coordinator and most recently as Community Initiatives & Engagement Coordinator.

Sherri is a go-to person and a brilliant collaborator with a talent for connecting diverse experts and fostering teamwork to drive positive change. She is an active member on numerous local committees including the Older Adult Advisory Panel, Community Safety & Wellbeing Panel to Mayor and Council, Violence Threat Risk Assessment Steering Committee, Sudbury District Restorative Justice Board of Directors, and Greater Sudbury & District Safer Suicide Network member among many others. She played a key role in facilitating the Improving Outcomes for Indigenous Youth’s Global Summit to the most recent Drug Toxicity Summit through her boundless compassion and ability to call others to action. Sherri’s advocacy work has led to international recognition by the United Nations and the World Health Organization and the City of Greater Sudbury being designated a Age Friendly and Youth Friendly Community. Additionally, she guides and mentors countless young women in the fields of healthcare, social work, leisure management, and Indigenous studies as a preceptor in post-secondary institutions.

Despite her vast achievements and the number of causes Sherri contributes to, she remains humble and genuinely cares about other people. Her ability to see the big picture and recognize the interconnectedness of folks and the need for a multidisciplinary approach have earned her respect and trust in her human-centered leadership. She brings hope forward and reminds us of what advocacy and allyship look like, one act of kindness at a time.

Tiffany is recognized as Sudbury’s anti-human trafficking expert. After working in local shelters, she began work with Sudbury and Area Victim Services in the position of Anti-Human Trafficking Coordinator & Public Educator, where she can be found having a formative role in the lives of her clients through her empathic, creative, and energic wraparound approach to support. She co-chairs the Greater Sudbury Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition where she strives to raise awareness, increase knowledge, and strengthen services to support survivors. In this role, she has presented for thousands in the community and collaborates with local agencies to develop a framework for crisis response for people exiting from human trafficking.

Tiffany’s passion to drive social change has resulted in her advocating beyond the local scale. She was invited by Parliament to speak at Queens Park in 2017 on the topic of homelessness and violence against women and children. In 2023, she was again invited by Parliament to be a member of a panel at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women at the House of Commons. She has advocated and appealed for increased funding to survivors of human trafficking. She truly has dedicated her tireless efforts to improving the lives of victims and survivors, many of whom are women and children. She brings together communities in strength and allyship as demonstrated through her connections with the Atikameksheng Restorative Justice Committee, Our Sisters Northern Alliance, Human Services Justice Coordinating Committee, and Sudbury Queers United Around Diversity.

Tiffany makes people feel heard and believe that they can go beyond their own expectations and begin to thrive once again. She is a model colleague, she is an expert in her field, she is a mother to many, she is a champion who advocates and celebrates loudly on behalf of those whose voices have been silenced… she is a force.

A recent retiree following her position as Director of Communications for Greater Sudbury Utilities, Wendy has built an impressive and influential career in public and media relations spanning the past 40 years. Her integrity, resilience, and professionalism has earned her the respect and recognition of her peers in a sector traditionally led by men.

Wendy’s leadership style is marked by inclusivity, collaboration, and a deep commitment to fostering growth in others. She has built a reputation not only for her own personal excellence but also for the dedication she brings to compassionately empowering her team, and women at large, by building networks of support and creating opportunities for them to develop their talents to reach their full potential and thrive. Wendy is an approachable and sought-after mentor who freely shares both highly-valued advice and her multifaceted management skills when it comes to approaching challenges. This is evidenced by her invitation to be the keynote speaker and mentor at Imperfection Lives Here’s Between Us Ladies Gala in both 2023 and 2024 and her feature as a Community Leader in She&Her’s 2019 Speaker Series for International Women’s Day.

She has given her time and service to several Boards of Directors including both YMCA NEO and the Greater Sudbury Development Corporation and shattered barriers to gender equity when she became the first woman Chair for each. In addition to her extensive past volunteerism, she continues to share her talents in strategy and communication to affect positive change in our community through her work with the Downtown Sudbury BIA, the Rotary Club of Sudbury, and the YMCA NEO Special Advisory Cabinet.

Wendy’s genuine desire to meaningfully contribute to our community has made her a beacon of inspiration and a catalyst for positive change. The mechanisms, connections, and pathways she has created for others who follow after her have a transformative ripple effect that serves to empower all women.