Roslyn Bern

As President of the Leacross Foundation, Roslyn Bern has been creating opportunities for women and girls throughout Canada. She has worked on initiatives for over 20 years, as an educator, a business woman, and as a philanthropist. She has focused on developing scholarships and bursaries for girls in under-represented career fields. She has been instrumental on sending teenage girls to the Arctic and Antarctic with Students on Ice, and created a partnership with colleges and corporations to certify STEM women in Electrical engineering. At every opportunity where a girl or woman can be educated, Roslyn develops a program that allows them to succeed, from setting up well paid internships at the Ottawa Heart Institute in Biomedical Engineering, providing IT classes to young mothers who had to leave school to raise their children, or coordinating schools with creative authors and illustrators. She has assisted with Habitat for Humanity NCR, coordinating youth construction with retrofitted homes, and served on the Family Selection Committee for 5 years. She had been a board member for Canadian Women's Foundation for 6 years, served on their Economic Development Committee to move women out of poverty for 5 years, and is currently looking at future opportunities for training of women in STEM careers.