New Leaders Roundtable - Labour Sustainability and HR

Over the last three years, our sector has gone through a tremendous amount of change, including an unprecedented increase in turnover of leadership positions. The New Leaders Roundtable is a monthly series curated to support these theatre workers through guest speakers, resource sharing, and peer to peer support.

Each meeting will begin with a 30 minute guided Q&A session with a senior leader in our industry. After the Q&A section, the guest speaker will leave the meeting, and a dedicated 60 minute Peer to Peer Session starts, where the attendees can discuss their shared issues and concerns in confidence, and benefit from each other’s experiences. 

The first session, Labour Sustainability and HR, will convene on Wednesday October 4th, 4pm - 5:30pm ET. Our guests for this session are Kathryn Westoll and Alison Peddie.

Kathryn Westoll is the Executive Director at Geordie Theatre in Montreal, QC. She is a board member at PACT and chairs the HR Committee. Kathryn was a stage manager for 17 years, has been an administrative leader for more than 10 years and was PACT Region 6 (Quebec) rep for 6 years. She has extensive experience teaching and mentoring in the arts and developing curricula. She has experience crafting and executing contracts; financial oversight skills and stakeholder/human resource management expertise; on-the-job HR experience; lobbied the provincial government for an allowance to submit organizational context documents in English; been involved in PACT labour relations working committees - including the creation of the COVID addendum to the CTA, and the PACT/PGC TYA working group; extensive experience scheduling, managing productions and teams of people, mentoring and paperwork. You can find Kathryn's bio on the Geordie website here.

Alison Peddie is the Labour Relations Manager at PACT. Alison's areas of knowledge include: Human Resources practices that include helping hire, train, and coach new/early career arts workers, coaching through difficult conversations and decision making; Stage Management practices that foster healthy work environments, scheduling and production problem solving; Labour Relations Manager practices that are based in competent and thorough contracting, scheduling, and production related paperwork. You can read Alison's bio on the PACT website here.

During the Roundtable discussion, Christine Rossie-Wright, Senior Program Worker at the AFC, will be present to provide a supportive and empathic ear. At the end of Roundtable discussion, she will summarize what was discussed as a group and provide any insight and takeaways, with the overarching goal of ending each session on a constructive note.

Christine Rossie-Wright BEd, MSW, RSW (Ont.)

Senior Program Worker, The AFC

Christine is a registered social worker and holds a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Windsor. In her role at The AFC, Christine coordinates their Emergency Financial Aid program and provides direct social work support to clients in need. She is an instructor of the Mental Health First Aid Course and facilitates workshops and presentations directly for the arts & entertainment community. Christine's education and experience is complemented by her previous work as an actor in professional musical theatre and her strong ties to the Toronto arts community. Christine draws on her vast and diverse experience to create helpful educational content that primarily focuses on mental health and wellness, in an effort to reduce the stigma in the industry around mental health problems. 

Please register for this session by Monday October 2nd, 6pm ET. This session is open to non-PACT members if space allows.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email our Program Associate Panthea Vatandoost at pantheav@pact.ca.