Our Team
We are your neighbours: Caring community members from across Algoma.
Staff
Desiree Gravel - Executive Director
Desiree is a dedicated leader passionate about community development, equity, and empowerment. Desiree has a B.A. in Psychology, and a Graduate Certificate in Human Resources. With over a decade of non-profit experience focused on mental health, addictions, and homelessness, she currently serves as the Executive Director of Algoma Community Foundation. Desiree’s leadership is characterized by her collaborative approach and strategic partnerships. She has found immense joy creating, building and working in programs to support youth, Trauma Informed Care, housing, mental health and addictions, neurodiversity, and 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Board of Directors
Jess Bolduc - Co-Chair
Jess Bolduc was born and raised in Plummer Additional township, back of Bruce Mines on a hobby farm and tree nursery, which was a family owned and operated business. She is a community member of Batchewana First Nation and lives, works and plays in Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie), the traditional territory of her Ojibway ancestors. Jess comes from a mixed family of Anishinaabe, French & Irish people with generational ties to Northern Ontario, who love the outdoors, music, dancing, plants and animals. When she is home, Jess can most often be found near the water, tending to her garden, going on adventures with her many nieces and nephews, hanging with her cats Olive and Beans, and harvesting from the land with her friends and relatives.
Jess has a BA in Economics and a minor in Psychology from Carleton University, in 2014 completed an Innovation Leadership certificate program with the University of Waterloo's Centre for Extended Learning & Professional development as well as at the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education – Leadership, Organizing and Action. These foundations supported her early career in community economic and social development where she gained experience working across a diversity of sectors including large scale construction projects in northern First Nations communities, housing, arts and community policing strategies in Sault Ste. Marie, and renewable energy research and development across Algoma (among other initiatives).
As part of her personal and professional development she has participated in the Getting to Maybe: A Social Innovation Residency in 2016 at the Banff Centre’s Lougheed Leadership program, has been trained through the Detroit Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute as part of their immersion and facilitation programming, has apprenticed as a facilitator with AoH Athena and Inclusion Press, and was an educator on Students on Ice for three years. Through these experiences, she has built up a community of mentors throughout community development, inclusion, social innovation, global facilitation and racial justice networks. Her past Board experience includes Community Foundations of Canada, the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (as their National Youth representative), Thinking Rock Community Arts and Turtle Island Institute. Within the realm of philanthropy, Jess was a founding member of the Next Generation Philanthropic Collaborative, a founding committee member for the Laidlaw Indigenous Youth & Community Futures Fund, and currently is lead faculty for the Circle on Philanthrophy’s Indigenous Abundance Accelerator program, and an advisor on strategy & governance for FLIP – the Foundation for Leadership, Imagination and Place.
Her life's work is in her role as the Executive Director of the 4Rs Youth Movement, an initiative she helped to launch and steward over the past 9+years. The work of 4Rs is about centering the needs and role Indigenous young people play in moving forward reconciliation between individuals, communities & systems in Canada. Through 4Rs she has travelled across Turtle Island and internationally, in order to learn about the conditions that might be necessary for communities to shift and transform complex systems through dialogue and strategic action. She is super excited to bring her knowledge and these experiences into the work with ACF.
Ani Ramos - Co-Chair
Ani is a Sault Ste. Marie based registered social service worker, community development professional and fundraiser. She immigrated from Ecuador in 2008. As an avid volunteer and active community member, Ani works within the local community to create and bolster equity and access for people experiencing different levels of oppression. Ani uses philanthropy as a tool to explore and support belonging, connection and human relationships. Ani is also part of the Board of Directors at Grocer4good and a patient Advisor with Sault Area Hospital and with Algoma Ontario Health Team. In her free time, you can find Ani and her partner playing with her 2 children at the park or hosting a potluck dinner at their home.
Lauren White - Treasurer
Lauren White joined ACF Board as Treasurer in 2024. She brings 8 years public accounting experience and now works at OLG in Vendor Management. Lauren was raised in Sault Ste. Marie and went to Carleton University where she graduated with a BA Degree in Sociology and a Minor in Psychology. She then went on to earn a Post-Graduate Diploma in Human Resources from St. Lawrence College. After graduating, she moved back to SSM where she worked in banking and went back to school once more to earn both a Certificate in Business and a BA Degree in Accounting from Algoma University.
Outside of her passion for accounting, you can find her most weekends with her husband and Australian Shepherd Mabel on the shores of Lake Superior at their tiny off-grid cabin or enjoying some camp time on St Joseph’s island.
Quinn Meawasige - Director
Quinn Meawasige is Anishinaabe from Serpent River First Nation. He graduated from Algoma University with a Bachelor of Arts in Community Economic and Social Development and a Certificate in Anishinaabemowin from Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig. Quinn currently works as the Northeast Community Relations Lead for Gaagige Zaagibigaa, an Indigenous Food Sovereignty Initiative servicing Indigenous Peoples in Northern Ontario. Quinn became a founding member of the Waterways Collective, an Anishinaabe paddling collective where they are active in paddling to pictograph sites, a wild rice revitalization initiative, and a contaminants testing initiative all within his home territory. Quinn is an active harvester, fisherman, hunter, gatherer, forager, and outdoor adventure seeker. He is always working to make land and water based learning opportunities accessible for his family, community and peoples.
Tamanna Rimi - Director
Tamanna joined the Algoma Community Foundation in June 2020 as Treasurer. She is a researcher with a particular interest in community development and family financial well-being. Tamanna has lived and traveled in many different countries and places and enjoyed building meaningful connections with the people around her. She has found working for communities and having a positive impact on them is the most rewarding part of her career in academia.
Tamanna is thrilled to be a part of ACF and hopes to make a meaningful contribution to the community. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Iowa State University and holds an M.S. in Economics from Tufts University, USA. She is also a proud mother of a young boy.
Laura Wyper - Director
Dr. Laura Wyper has a Bachelor of Health Sciences in Midwifery from Laurentian University, a Bachelor of Education from Trent University, a Master of Arts in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development with a specialization in Comparative, International and Development Education from OISE, at the University of Toronto. Laura works as an Assistant Professor, and currently as the Department Chair, for the Community Economic and Social Development Department at Algoma University.
Laura finds work like volunteering for the ACF's Board of Director's part of how she she puts into ‘praxis’ some of the activism she teaches for CESD in courses like: Environment and Community Resilience, Sustainable Community Development, Community Advocacy and Social Justice, and Project Management and Proposal Writing, at AU. Laura is also a Research Associate at NORDIK Research Institute.
Krista Bissiallon - Director
Krista Bissiallon is French/ settler and Anishinaabe kwe from Bawaating (Sault Ste. Marie, ON), with roots in Mississauga First Nation. She is a graduate of the Community Economic and Social Development program out of Algoma University and continues to live in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
She has filled many community development roles, holding positions with Youth Social Infrastructure, Young Leaders Circle, and Northern Lights Collaborative. Currently, she is co-chair of the Algoma Community Foundation, and a Program Manage with the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
As a facilitator and dreamer, Krista has spent the last several years in various avenues of community development, with a strong focus on supporting young people doing positive change work in her own community, across Ontario, and in some contexts across Turtle Island. Krista is inspired by the good work of young Indigenous folks in her region. She brings her passion for people, learning, social justice and community development to her own practices in pursuit of just futures for all.