JP Melville – Hub Director
JP is an Ottawa-based, social purpose, business and project management consultant who partners with organizations, individuals, and the private sector to assist them with achieving mission.
A summary of JP’s work environments, present and past, includes revenue positive social enterprise, seniors’ housing with a focus on small-scale shared accommodation, supporting Bronson Centre’s growth as a creative hub and service organization (from 45,000′ sq to the sky’s the limit), the current renovation of Bronson Centre’s 1000 person performance venue, construction in general, publishing his own literary projects, sustainable agriculture, and ten years of work in the global south and a couple of conflict zones to boot.
Ruth Truong – Communications
Ruth is an Ottawa-born lover of food and films. Nothing better than experimenting with new recipes or living and learning vicariously through foreign and independent films at Bytowne Cinema (her favourite). She is a graduate of both uOttawa (B.A.) and Carleton (M.A.) with a background in English Literature and the avantgarde of Digital Humanities. When she is not coordinating rentals of Bronson Centre’s non-permanent meeting & event spaces or posting Bronson RISE content, she is working on streamlining Bronson Centre’s online presence.
Never one to slow down, when wearing her other-than-Bronson-Centre hat (s), Ruth is gaining experience in mobilization and organization for decent work. She hopes to increase her capacity to give time and resources toward community care and mutual aid.
Elisa Ojeda – Projects Director
Elisa hails from Chile, South America. She brings us many years of private sector project management experience. She has found a home in Bronson Centre, more than just a place of work. Investing her private sector experience into the social benefit sector, especially our community hub, has been a great change and growth experience (for all of us!). After timelines, Gantt charts, workplans, regular scrumming and budgets, her passions are family, gardening, and too many creative hobbies to summarize here. Elisa is in awe of how beautiful Ottawa is, as a city, and as her new home.
Christian Veselovsky – Outreach and Indigenous Partnership
Born and raised in the Ottawa area, Christian is a graduate of the Social Service Worker program at Algonquin College. As part of the growing partnership between Kateri Native Ministry and the Bronson Centre, Christian splits his time between both organizations. He brings his experience working with Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers to Bronson Centre. Outside of his work, Christian is active in the Ottawa classical music scene, playing cello in the Divertimento Orchestra and singing bass in the Notre Dame Cathedral Schola Cantorum.
Rhonda Flanagan – Strategy Analyst
Rhonda joins us virtually from Melancthon, about as rural as rural gets in southern Ontario. She brings a wealth of not-for-profit housing and social purpose experience to Bronson Centre. Her working and volunteer life has revolved around adult education and property, administration, and Board management. For more than 15 years Rhonda was an education consultant and trainer in the co-operative housing sector. She spent an additional six years as an Easter Seal Society camp director and property manager. Since 2008, she has been a volunteer Board director with the Abbeyfield Houses Society of Durham, Ontario, a charitable seniors housing organization.
We got to know Rhonda through the pandemic and she became our shining star on creative and productive virtual work flexibility. In early 2022 we invited her to join our team. She supports Bronson Centre organizations that collaborate on broad objectives of seniors inclusion in all aspects of their mandates. She keeps an eye out for sustainability, collective impact, and seniors housing alternatives in the context of cultural diversity and an ageing demographic.
Still, Rhonda’s endless scope of vision has discipline. She assists our collaborating organizations with legal agreements, new business plans, and maintaining a coherent link between their organizations’ unique mandates and Bronson Centre as a community hub. Working together, there’s no other recipe for Bronson Centre’s long term development vision, she says.
Ryan Lindsey – Tech Director
Ryan is an Ottawa-born human who has a passion for singing, computers, and making people smile. Working with the Bronson team has nurtured his abilities to :
A) help out with software/hardware gazoozlewums that need some attention (and always will !), and
B) approach Bronson Centre’s IT and tenant community as an everyday learn-grow experience.
IT, Ryans says, is so much more than just information and technology. IT is an extension of our art of living.
Are you a tenant at Bronson Centre? Let’s be creative! Get a hold of Ryan if you have any questions about this website. Want to add a link on your site to Bronson Centre? Questions about your computer or network setup and how, together, we can all become more visible on the net?
Email ryan@wavelengthmedia.ca
Babita Todd – Finance
Babita. Our frighteningly razor-sharp, on-the-numbers bookkeeper.
Babita sailed into Canada from the southern lands of Guyana over three decades ago. She loves the snowy season. It represents peace and rejuvenation.
On the side, Babita owns and operates a time + a half business with her husband. Open pretty much seven days a week from spring through fall. Still, there’s a chunk of good time for rest and play (after all tax info is fired off to the accountant, of course). A perfect arrangement, don’t you know, that allows for full advantage of the Canadian winter, hitting the powdery slopes with fresh crisp air in every breath… like being in heaven… and replenishing for the year to come.
Keith
Marble – Community Outreach Special Projects
Curiosity got this cat !
From toddlerhooddom to notsoretireedom, Keith has been always asking why? As one of the many kinds of a true Canuck, Keith’s curiosity was rooted first in nature – hiking, fishing, and camping in the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary, Alberta. His second world of curiosity revolved around craft, our lives as crafters, of things, of ideas, of solutions, of plain old stuff and how it was made (many shouts out to Keith’s Dad and his homebased, furniture woodworking shop). The crafting of stuff curiosity unfolded into a career spanning 25 years as a mechanical engineer. Keith has worked widely in product and process development, and engineering management in health care, automotive, and medical devices.
Then curiosity again got the better of Keith… then he stumbled upon Bronson Centre. It was a moment of “A-Ha!”. Here he discovered this crafting of people, community, the complexity of soft development, interesting, rewarding, and Oh No ! Unlike his linear career, a world of circles and connections and the joy of outcomes that just were not in the plan.
Keith is focussed with a true seniors’ lens (yes, he qualifies) on working with the Bronson team, tenant agencies and partner organizations to formulate a fresh, flexible vision for the redevelopment and long-term sustainability of Bronson Centre.
So much for retirement and spare time ? Hey, you can find Keith self-propelled – bicycling through Gatineau Park, skating the Rideau Canal or hiking the many trails around Ottawa. Just look for the
guy who’s stopped and asking questions….