After seven years of dedication to the partnership that she helped to create, Tonya Surman is stepping down as CPCHE Partnership Director. Tonya was instrumental in CPCHE’s formation and success. In collaboration with others, she developed CPCHE’s innovative governance model, which has been key to the productive and interdisciplinary working relationships that have endured among the partners since CPCHE’s inception. She raised nearly $3 million to support CPCHE projects and secretariat staff. She was the lead facilitator for CPCHE’s National Policy Consultation, a series of workshops held in 2007 in cities across Canada aimed at fostering a multi-stakeholder dialogue around key aspects of children’s environmental health policy. Tonya’s confident leadership and boundless energy have helped propel CPCHE onwards to its position today as a respected and well-known leader on children’s health and environment issues. CPCHE partners will celebrate Tonya’s contribution to the partnership at a luncheon in her honor in early May 2008.

Erica Phipps, environmental health consultant and former head of the children’s health and environment program for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), has been hired as CPCHE Partnership Director, effective 1 March 2008. Erica is well-known and respected within the CPCHE partnership, having served as the report writer for CPCHE’s National Policy Consultation throughout 2007. With a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan, where she specialized in environmental health and policy, and eight years of experience working on children’s environmental health issues, Erica brings in-depth substantive knowledge to the position. She also brings an international perspective, having worked with developing countries on chemicals management issues for the United Nations in Geneva, followed by her ground-breaking work in fostering collaboration among Canada, the United States and Mexico on children’s health and environment issues through the establishment of the CEC program. Erica is based in rural Pontiac, Quebec, about an hour outside of Ottawa, where she lives with her husband and three young children.