Introducing Vanessa Herrick: ELAN’s new Executive Director

From Centaur Theatre to Battlefield Earth, L.A. to London, and film production to journalism to Seniors Action Quebec: we are very excited to introduce you to Vanessa Herrick.

Vanessa Herrick is already known to many ELAN members and partners. At the dawn of the new millennium, Vanessa was Director of Public Relations and Marketing for Centaur Theatre Company. Prior to Centaur, Vanessa worked with Warner Brothers and MGM Studios in Montreal and Los Angeles in various roles in production of major films such as The Bone Collector, Battlefield Earth and Rollerball.

In 2008, Vanessa enrolled at Concordia University to study journalism. She was awarded the Don McGillivray Memorial Prize for Explanatory Journalism for “Bombs and Diplomacy” in 2009, and in 2010 Vanessa received the Canadian International Development Agency’s Journalism and Development award. After graduating from Concordia, Vanessa pursued further studies in a masters program in International Communications and Development at City University, London, England.

In 2012, Vanessa joined Health Partners International of Canada as Communications Manager for their Capacity Building and Access to Medicines project in Afghanistan. In 2013, she moved to a position as Marketing and Communications Manager for the World Hemophilia Federation, where she was promoted to Head of Marketing and Communications in 2016. Vanessa moved to Ottawa as Communications and Public Affairs Manager at the Global Centre for Pluralism in 2018.

In 2019, Vanessa became the first Executive Director of the recently created Seniors Action Quebec, a Quebec-based not-for-profit focused on advocacy and community-building with the mandate of creating a province-wide network of community organizations working together to support access to care and social services for English-speaking seniors. SAQ has played a vital role in supporting seniors during the COVID pandemic and Vanessa has supervised valuable projects as well has been an impassioned and articulate spokesperson in the media.

ELAN and SAQ have developed a strong working relationship over the course of two collaborative projects. The popular video project, We’re All In This Together, was developed by Vanessa in collaboration with ELAN’s Guy Rodgers. SAQ and ELAN are also partners in a project about identity and belonging in Quebec’s English-speaking community funded by the Secretariat for Relations with English-speaking Quebecers: SAQ’s Je Me Souviens and ELAN’s Waves of Change.

Vanessa brings a wealth of diverse experience to ELAN. Staff and board are eager to begin working with her on February 1^st.

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

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