About.

Profile: Artist and “recovering” Humanitarian Worker

Graduating from Ryerson Polytechnic University’s School of Image Arts in film, Christine was the first female to receive several local and national awards for cinematography. (National Kodak Cinematography Award, PFA Medallion Award and an apprenticeship through the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television). Christine has apprenticed with Peter Mettler and with several other award-winning cinematographers in addition to working as a Director of Photography for independent narrative, documentary and television shows. Her experience also includes Producing and working on major motion picture films in the camera and lighting department.

As a woman in a technical area such as Cinematography in the late 90s and early 2000, she faced innumerable challenges and gender barriers. Given this, Christine decided to make her own environmental documentary films in northern Canada that explore our human connection with nature. Her film Awards include those from the Waterwalker Film Festival, dedicated to Bill Mason, in addition to receiving support from the National Film Board of Canada, Canada Arts Council, Alberta Arts Council, Canadian Geographic and Mountain Equipment Coop.

“show me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are”

José Ortega y Gasset

Christine’s working life had her leading several canoeing expeditions in the north of Canada; working as an Outward Bound instructor; leading and managing programmes in outdoor education centres; in addition to, leading trips and programmes in adventure therapy for people of all ages and either surviving cancer, HIV/AIDs, mental health, abuse, head injuries or varying visual, physical or mental abilities.

Christine’s interest in alleviating human suffering had her enter the humanitarian sector in 1999. This work had her in places such as Chechnya, South Sudan, Darfur, Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Middle East and Sri Lanka and more for a range of organisations that include Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children, CARE and recently the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement.

After years in project coordination in the field, Christine re-oriented into providing safety and security risk management support to many humanitarian and development organisations in some of the most dangerous places in the world. This work is about facilitating safe humanitarian access so that principled life saving assistance is provided to the most vulnerable people in both conflict and natural disaster situations.

Throughout these past years in the humanitarian sector, Christine has been privileged to serve as a role model for women in security and for diverse humanitarian and development personnel. She has researched, authored and published several papers and articles such as the Global Interagency Security Forum’s (GISF) briefing paper ​Gender and Security: Guidelines for Mainstreaming Gender in Security Risk Management​; and, InterAction/GISF’ publication ​NGO Safety and Security Training Project: How to create Effective Security Training for NGOs.​ These contributions in addition to writing and publishing other articles have provided her global recognition on gendered and inclusive risk and security management in the aid sector, the UN and Government donor agencies.

Christine continues to provide humanitarian support to organizations as co-founder and collaborator of the Humanitarian Initiative for Leadership and Learning (HILL: www.hillcollective.org) which is a collective of like-minded and professional Canadian humanitarian practitioners that aim to provide support to international humanitarian and development organisations. She is also co-director of the Université of Québec in Montréal’s (UQAM) Observatoire canadien des crises et de l’action humanitaire (OCCAH) Duty of care, risk and security management learning and development initiative.