As the Executive Director of Distress Centres Toronto, Karen leads the organization in its mission to provide emotional support, crisis intervention.
Her career as a crisis intervener spans 35 years and has been as much about creating safe and suitable venues and outlets for her clients to speak, as galvanizing teams, pooling the efforts of cross-community agencies and promoting the inclusion of mental health into the full spectrum of the term - community health.
Karen has a vast array of accomplishments, including merging all telephone distress services in Toronto into one organization in 2001, and in 2007, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.
Karen will use her Vital People grant to attend a number of international conferences and seminars that explore issues and innovations in suicide prevention and mental health.
