The Board of Directors is made up of a diverse group of community members who are dedicated to ensuring everyone in Toronto has access to enough healthy food. These members provide the governance for our organization sharing their wisdom, expertise and leadership.
Board of Directors 2022
Habon Ali, Chair
Christine Farrugia, Vice-Chair
Carm Mccormick, Treasurer
John Lee, Secretary
Sharmini Fernando
Kelly Jackson
Darrick Li
Rachael MacKenzie-Neill
Casey Ramsaran
O’Shani Rerrie
Nathalie Vengal
Habon Ali, Chair
Habon Ali is an Urban Planner and certified Project Management Professional with experience in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Her professional background has encompassed multiple disciplines including community development, waterfront planning and transportation planning and policy. Habon’s work has focused on developing comprehensive and practical solutions to enhancing urban mobility and encouraging the creation of healthy, inclusive communities. Prior to becoming an urban planner Habon worked in the settlement service sector where she gained extensive experience in community development, capacity building, and program innovation. She has supported the development of Community Food and Nutrition Programs as well as the creation of Strategic Plans that identify opportunities to coordinate and enhance local service delivery to newcomer families.
Christine Farrugia, Vice-Chair
Christine Farrugia has had a variety of roles over the past 7 years at Loblaw Companies Limited. She is currently the Vice President, Customer Centre of Excellence responsible for consumer insights and shifting the culture of the organization to be more customer centric. She also has experience in mergers and acquisitions, post-merger implementation and building and operating loyalty programs. Before joining Loblaw, Christine worked at a Big 4 accounting firm doing transaction advisory services on public-private partnerships in the infrastructure sector, and at a private equity firm. Christine received her Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Applied Economics from Queen’s University, and her Masters of Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.
Carm McCormick, Treasurer
Carm has an extensive career in retail, creating and executing strategies to drive customer experience, business growth, increased profitability, and improve operational effectiveness. She has had the opportunity to do this for iconic Canadian brands as both an employee and as a consultant. An advocate for civic engagement, Carm has focused her efforts on serving the Willowdale community over the years, chairing various school councils and committees. She is an optimist with an appreciation for, and a continued focus on collaboration and engagement.
John Lee, Secretary
John Lee is a policy professional with over 10 years of experience in the Ontario Public Service. He has broad social policy and strategic policy/planning experience over a range of cross-government projects and transformative initiatives related to social assistance, basic income, poverty reduction, disability issues and employment services. In addition to his policy experience, John spent five years in California leading fund development and programs at The Bread Project, a bakery and culinary skills training social enterprise. He has a Hons. B.Sc. in economics and computer science from University of Toronto.
Sharmini Fernando
Sharmini Fernando is a non-profit administrator with extensive experience working across grassroots, municipal, non-governmental, and international development sectors. Committed to creating space and voice for marginalized communities, she has worked to support immigrant, displaced, racialized and queer communities in Canada and Sri Lanka. Her international work in Sri Lanka focused on health and human rights within the context of civil conflict with specific attention to the impact on women. Sharmini is a founding member of the Ujamaa Housing Cooperative, the Coalition of Agencies Serving South Asians and Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, she continues to work on capacity building initiatives for diverse community-based organizations. Sharmini is currently the Executive Director of the Syme Woolner Neighbourhood and Family Centre.
Kelly Jackson
Kelly Jackson is the Vice-President, External Affairs and Professional Learning at Humber College. Kelly has extensive experience in the government and post-secondary education sectors. Prior to joining Humber, Kelly held numerous roles in provincial politics including Director of Communications to the Minister of Finance and Director of Policy to the Minister of Education. Kelly spent a number of years overseeing strategic and integrated planning, government relations and stakeholder engagement at Seneca College. She also has experience in research project management having coordinated international conference series and academic publications at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo. Kelly holds a Master of Arts in Political Science and a Graduate Diploma in German and European Studies from York University and has studied at Ruprecht-Karls Universität Heidelberg and the University of Sheffield. She is co-author of the children’s book Our Canada: A Year With Canuck Kids. Kelly is currently President of the Board of Directors for the Empire Club of Canada.
Darrick Li
Darrick Li is currently the Managing Director at Standard Media Index with 14 years of sales leadership, advertising, and marketing background. Darrick oversees the Canadian operations across business development, partnerships, product, client service, and is also involved with strategic partnerships in the U.S. His unwavering work ethic and ambition to become a great storyteller led him to previously be a part of the Marketing faculty at Seneca College in North York, teaching in the Social Media graduate program. Darrick has a passion for food with culinary training from George Brown College and aspires to be the best chef at home to his wife, two children, and Bernese Mountain dog.
Rachael MacKenzie-Neill
Rachael is the Vice President, Marketing & Development for BGC Canada (formerly Boys & Girls Clubs of Canada) which is Canada’s largest dedicated youth serving organization. BGC supports over 200,000 children and youth across the country, providing vital third places, outside of school and home, where young people can find everything from sports to homework help, healthy eating and culinary skills to STEM and tech education, leadership training to job readiness. At BGC, Rachael is responsible for national partnerships and the BGC brand. A Chartered Marketer, she serves on the Canadian Marketing Association Not-For-Profit Advisory Council. She also teaches marketing communications at George Brown College on a part-time basis.
Casey Ramsaran
Casey Ramsaran is a Certified Human Resources Leader who is truly passionate about helping others evolve through continuous growth and self-discovery. Currently, Casey works in a Human Resources capacity at the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA). Prior to joining the CBA, Casey worked in several industries including logistics and transportation, marketing, media, post-secondary education, and telecommunications. Casey also owns an independent coaching practice and works with clients worldwide.
O’Shani Rerrie
O’Shani is a motivated and experienced leader with a proven record of accomplishment across multiple roles and industries. He is currently the Vice President of Service and Supply Chain at Unisync Group Limited where he is responsible for customer service, program management, inventory planning and compliance. He brings value by partnering with stakeholders to develop and execute on strategic initiatives that optimize performance and drive a favorable impact to the client experience. He is routinely described as a collaborative and forward-thinking leader who brings a high energy level. Prior to joining Unisync, O’Shani held leadership roles with Canada’s largest grocery store, North America’s largest Uniform supplier and one of Canada’s big four banks. He received his MBA from Ivey School of Business.
Nathalie Vengal
Nathalie was born and raised in Colombia and sent abroad to pursue her post-secondary education in Canada. She graduated from York University as a Human Rights and Equity Studies Major and now works as a National Representative for UFCW Canada. During her time in University, she successfully worked for the Latino youth LGTBQ community as the leader of a Gay-straight alliance group and successfully created various events and awareness campaigns; Simultaneously, she worked as an advocate for United Food and Commercial Workers Canada as a Chapter President for the Students against migrant exploitation group. In 2014, she received the Equity and Diversity INI award issued by the City Of Toronto due to her work for the LGTBQ community. In March 2016, she successfully founded the “Youth Feeding Youth” food bank agency at the Centre For Spanish Speaking Peoples which focuses on serving out-of-status youth and families in the City of Toronto. Thanks to the collaboration of the CSSP, the North York Harvest Food Bank and the municipal government, our agency is successfully operating on a bi-monthly basis.
Robert Vincent
Robert is a retail and consumer goods professional having worked in and consulted for both industries throughout his career. He has a passion for consumer-facing businesses and currently works at Partake Brewing as Chief of Staff driving strategic projects and supporting the CEO to scale across North America. Prior to his current role he was a consultant with Boston Consulting Group focused in the retail & consumer practice and also worked at Loblaw & Shoppers Drug Mart holding a variety of roles within the loyalty and analytics team. Robert has received his Honours of Business Administration (HBA) from the Ivey Business School at Western University and his MBA from London Business School (UK).