Samuel L. Duboc
Chairman 

Mr. Duboc’s career is marked by his passion for entrepreneurship, his ingenuity and corporate and community leadership. As Founder of EdgeStone Capital Partners, Mr. Duboc successfully built one of Canada’s leading private equity firms. Prior to starting EdgeStone, Mr. Duboc was a Managing Director at CIBC Capital Partners and co-founder and COO of the Loyalty Group Inc. (Air Miles Reward Program), Canada’s most successful loyalty database marketing program. 

In 2000, Mr. Duboc was recognized as one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40^TM and in 2005 was chosen as one of the “most influential” alumni of the program. In addition to his ongoing work with Pathways to Education Canada, he is a member of the Young President’s Organization (YPO), Crescent School Board of Governors, Bishop Strachan School Board of Trustees and a former member of the board of directors of CAMH Foundation. Mr. Duboc holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Tufts University magna cum laude and Tau Beta Pi and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Robert Wright
Vice Chair

Mr. Wright is a recognized leader in the financial world as well as in the philanthropic arena. He is currently the President of Edinglen Holdings Inc. and Honourary Director of Teck Resources Limited. Mr. Wright was the Deputy Chairman of Teck Cominco Limited from June 2000 until April 2008 before which he served for six years as Chairman of Teck Corporation. From 1989 to 1993, he was Chairman of the Ontario Securities Commission. Prior to taking on that role, Mr. Wright was a senior partner in the law firm of Lang Michener. He has been a director of several public and charitable corporations and is presently Chairman of Armtec Infrastructure Inc. He is also a member of the Pension Fund Committee of Air Liquide Canada Inc. Mr. Wright was the 1961 Gold Medalist of the Osgoode Hall Law School and is a Member of the Order of Canada.

Diana Moeser
Board Secretary

With a passion for building strength and capacity in local and international communities, Diana Moeser has had a long career in community health care and health care policy, including being on the forefront of the development of urban health. Diana holds a Masters of Political Science as well as a Masters in Health Science both from the University of Toronto. From 1984 to 1992 Diana was Vice President of Ambulatory and Community Health Services at The Doctor’s Hospital. For the six years following, she was Vice President of Urban Health at The Wellesley Hospital. Today Diana is a Health Consultant at Urban Health Associates as well as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at University of Toronto. She is also the founder of Women’s Own – the first and only detox centre for women in Toronto.

Diana serves as Secretary of the Board for Pathways Canada and Chair of the Program Committee. She is also Chair of Oxfam Canada’s J. Oosterveld Memorial Fund for HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa, Vice Chair of the Vermont Square Park Renewal Project, and a member of the Advisory Committee for Youth Empowering Parents. Throughout her career, Diana has held numerous other senior volunteer positions including Board President of Regent Park Community Health Centre, Board member of West Central Community Health Centre, Vice President of Toronto Community Care Access Centre, Chair of the Canadian Society of International Health, Director of Oxfam Canada and Co-Chair of the Canadian Conference on International Health. She was a founding member of the Gerstein Centre and was a Steering Committee for the VOICE Project with Health Canada. 

Jane Nyman
Treasurer

A Chartered Accountant, Jane began her career at Ernst & Young, followed by increasingly senior positions at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Union Bank of Switzerland (Canada) where she was Director of Operations, and the CPP Investment Board where she was Vice-President – Finance and Operations. One of the first employees of the CPP Investment Board, Jane oversaw the establishment of the organization’s investment operations and finance infrastructure as the company’s assets grew to over $100 billion. 
 
Jane earned a Bachelor of Arts in Honors Business Administration (HBA) from the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. She is also a Chartered Accountant and a Chartered Financial Analyst.

 

Trent Henry

Trent Henry is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ernst & Young LLP in Canada. Prior to taking on this role, he was managing partner of Ernst & Young’s Canadian Tax practice, joining the Canadian Executive Committee at that time. He led Ernst & Young's International Tax practice from 2004 until 2008, and was a member of the Canadian Tax Desk in New York from 1999 until 2001. Trent joined Ernst & Young in 1989 after earning his bachelor of business administration from the University of Prince Edward Island. In 2009, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

Active in both his profession and his community, Trent is a member of the Board of Governors of the Canadian Tax Foundation, where he chairs its Finance Committee and sits on its Executive Committee. In addition to his position at Pathways, Trent is a member of the Board of the Sunnybrook Foundation, serving as Treasurer and chairing the Audit and Finance Committee. He is also a member of the United Way’s Major Individual Giving Cabinet.

Greg Kiessling

Greg co-founded and grew Sitraka into Canada’s largest self-financed software company, and sold it in 2002. Greg then founded Up Capital, a private investment firm focused on cleantech and renewable energy. Up Capital is the founding investor of Bullfrog Power, Canada’s largest green energy retailer, where Greg is executive chairman.

In addition to serving on the Pathways to Education board, Greg dedicates resources and time to the challenge of shifting to an environmentally sustainable economy. Greg received his Bachelor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo in 1984.

Jay Lefton

Jay A. Lefton is a partner in the Toronto office of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP where he practises in the area of corporate and securities law, including public and private financings, mergers, acquisitions and take-over bids, private equity and strategic alliances; technology transfer and licensing, with an emphasis on technology and life sciences companies. Jay is a former member of the Ontario Securities Commission’s Securities Advisory Committee, which advises the Commission on various matters, including legislative and policy initiatives, and has been an adjunct faculty member of Osgoode Hall Law School and the Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto. 

Jay is on the board of numerous organizations including the ThinkFirst Foundation of Canada, the Ontario Genomics Institute, the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation, and the Canadian Friends of Hebrew University. He is also active in various committees and task forces of the American Bar Association's Mergers & Acquisitions Committee and the International Bar Association. He is a past board member of University of Toronto Innovations Foundation, and a former member of the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Council Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer and the Biotechnology Council of Ontario. 

In addition to several rankings and recognitions and authorships, Jay has been a speaker at conferences across the globe. 

 

Jim Meekison

Jim Meekison is the Chairman and CEO of Trimin Capital Corp., a private equity company. 

Jim’s career has spanned over 45 years in the investment banking, cable television and private equity industries. He started with E. F. Hutton Inc. in New York and then joined Nesbitt Thompson Limited in Montreal. He became a director of Nesbitt’s in 1970. Jim also co-founded Cablecasting Limited, a cable television company which he joined full-time in 1971 and subsequently became Chairman. In 1986, he left Cablecasting and founded a new private equity company which evolved into Trimin Capital Corp.

Since 1986 Trimin and its predecessor companies have invested in many industries including automotive parts, aerospace parts, plastic film, building products, hotel services, food manufacturing and computer services. Trimin is now a private investment company solely owned by Jim.

Jim has served as a director of numerous Canadian public and private companies and he has been active in many charitable and philanthropic organizations. In addition to his work with Pathways, he is currently a member of GMP Capital Inc., and The Dean of Arts Advisory Board at UBC.

Jim received an MBA from Harvard Business School and BA and MA degrees from the University of British Columbia.

Peter Donolo

Peter has a rich history of serving Canada as a political strategist and public affairs expert. From 1993 to 1999, Peter served as Director of Communications in the Prime Minister's Office and chief communications strategist for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his government. Following his tenure in the PMO, Peter served for two years as Canadian Consul General to Milan, and later as Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs and Government Relations at Air Canada. From 2002 to 2009, Peter led the strategic communications practise at The Strategic Counsel as partner and senior vice-president. Most recently, Peter served as Chief of Staff to the Leader of the Opposition in Ottawa.

As a volunteer, Peter is a past Board Director for the Toronto Board of Trade, and has served on the Italian Chamber of Commerce of Toronto as well as the Canadian Journalism Foundation. Peter has been involved in Pathways since 2001, and is a member of the founding board of directors of Pathways to Education Canada.

David Reeve

David Reeve is the founder and president of Distributech Inc., a business process outsourcing company focused on document and communications management. A graduate of The University of Western Ontario in Economics, David joined IBM Canada in 1984 and held a variety of marketing and sales management positions with the organization, focused on IT outsourcing and enterprise sales. In 1992, David founded Distributech Inc. and developed the company into a leading outsourcing provider to the wealth management and financial services industry. David also co-founded InvestorPOS.com, an outsourced provider of document services to the financial services industry.

David joined the Pathways to Education board in 2008 and chaired the Pathways to Education Cabinet from 2009 to 2011. He was a founding member of Brantford Rotary Club, a Paul Harris Fellow as well as a member of the YPO Ontario Board from 2008 to 2011.

 

Carolyn Acker
Ex Officio, Founder 

Carolyn Acker is the Founder of Pathways to Education. 

Carolyn began her career as a Registered Nurse at Saint Michael’s Hospital, and then became a Community Health Nurse with Saint Elizabeth Health Care. She later obtained a Bachelor of Administrative Studies from York University and a Master of Arts in Applied Behavioural Sciences from City University in Seattle, Washington. At Saint Elizabeth Health Care she held positions of District Nurse specializing in Palliative Care, District Administrator, Director of Nursing Services, and Director of Policy and Program Development.  

In 1992, Carolyn became the Executive Director of the Regent Park Community Health Centre, in Canada’s oldest and largest public housing community. The Health Centre serves more than 20,000 people annually who are largely disadvantaged or homeless, and offers a range of health and social services, and capacity-building programs. In 2001, while at the Health Centre, Carolyn founded the socially innovative Pathways to Education program with the goal of breaking the cycle of poverty and implementing the Centre’s vision of “Community Succession” – that the young people growing up in the community would be the future doctors, nurses, social workers, community development workers and administrators of the Centre. In Regent Park, the Pathways program was successful in reducing dropout rates by over 70 per cent and quadrupling the rate of students attending post-secondary education. In 2006, Carolyn became the founding Executive Director of Pathways to Education Canada and led the successful replication of Pathways in five other communities across Ontario and Quebec.  

Today, Carolyn holds the position of Founder of Pathways to Education Canada. In 2010, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of New Brunswick and was recognized as a “Canadian Pioneer in Poverty Reduction.”

David Hughes
Ex Officio, President & CEO 

As President & CEO of Pathways, David provides the strategic and operational leadership and oversight to all facets of the national organization. Prior to joining Pathways in 2009, David served for eight years as President & CEO of Habitat for Humanity Canada during which time the national association doubled its annual revenues, and expanded its operations from 55 to over 72 locations across Canada. David was instrumental in increasing Habitat’s role internationally, introducing several new programs and services, strengthening its national brand identity, and becoming an influential voice for affordable homeownership in Canada.

Before Habitat, David worked for the international headquarters of the SOS Children’s Villages. In his 10 years with that organization, David served as senior advisor to the International President & Secretary General, as Regional Director for North America, and as Senior Representative while on foreign postings in Europe, Africa, Asia, the United States and at the United Nations. David was also the founder of The Impact Group, a management consulting firm dedicated to bringing a bottom-line results-oriented approach to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of non-profit organizations. He continues to serve on governing boards and advisory groups for several organizations.

David holds a degree from the University of Western Ontario in economics and a postgraduate degree from the London School of Economics in social policy, public administration and non-profit management. He was born in Toronto, raised in London, Ontario, and now lives in Mississauga with his wife and two young children.