Career Development Practitioners Advisory Committee Members
Trish McNamara, CCS, CCDP
Trish McNamara has been in the education and employment sector for over 25 years. For the last 11 years, Trish works for KEYS Job Centre a not-for-profit, charitable organization as the Program Manager for the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark area. Trish is the Eastern Ontario Ambassador for Career Professionals of Canada. Trish was honoured to be awarded the Career Professionals of Canada Award of Excellence 2017 Winner for Outstanding Volunteer Contributor and most recently the 2018 Award of Excellence Honourable Mention for Outstanding Volunteer Team for the CPC Ambassador Team.
Some of Trish’s Board experience includes President of the 1000 Islands Gananoque Chamber of Commerce and Director on the 1000 Island Community Development Corporation.
Trish is very passionate about assisting our sector in moving forward to standardized professional certification and is honoured to join the CDPCBO Advisory Committee.
Brad Whitehorn, BA, CCDP
Brad Whitehorn, BA, CCDP is the Sales & Marketing coordinator at CLSR Inc. He was thrown into the career development field headfirst after completing a Communications degree in 2005 at York University, and hasn’t looked back! Since then, Brad has acquired certificates in Social Media (Algonquin College), and Employment Services (Dalhousie University). As well, he has worked on the development, implementation, and certification for various career and personality assessments including Personality Dimensions®, making sure that Career Development Practitioners get the right tools to best serve their clients.
Ledianis Rivero-Sosa
Ledianis Rivero-Sosa is a career development professional with 10 years of experience working in the field. She’s currently the Manager of Client Service at World Skills Employment Centre, an immigrant-serving agency that has been supporting newcomer integration in the local labour market for over 20 years. Ledianis is originally from Cuba where she obtained a B.A. majoring in English Translation and Interpretation. The common denominator of her over 20-year career has been client and stakeholder relations, combined with strong administrative and communications skills in her various roles in Cuba and in Canada, where she landed in 2009.
A self-proclaimed lifelong learner, Ledianis went on to complete three post-graduate diplomas in Foreign Trade, Hospitality Management, and Communications and Public Relations from 1999 to 2006. In Canada, she continued pursuing her passion for learning and graduated with a Management Certificate for Women from Carleton University in 2017. She has also completed multiple courses on Cross-Cultural Competency and Career Development. She became a Certified Career Development practitioner in 2018. Ledianis is a strong believer in the power of communication to connect with others and make the world a better place.
Tammy McDowell, CCDP
Tammy’s professional experience and background reflect two of her key passions – career counselling and student success.
Tammy is a career consultant Georgian College. She has an Honors BA, a Career Development Practitioner certification through Conestoga College and is certified to administer and interpret many A and B level career assessment tools. With 17 years’ experience as a Career Development Practitioner, she has worked in various contexts including Employment Ontario, Vocational Rehabilitation, Post-Secondary Education and private practice.
Tammy has provided career counselling and resiliency coaching to clients across Canada and has been a member of the CDPCBO since 2017. She contributed to the Assessment Development Working Group for the national CDP certification exam, has worked on various provincial work integrated learning (WIL) awards committees, and is a champion of strengths based counselling.
Sahri Woods Baum, M.Ed.
Sahri began her career as a counsellor at McGill University. For the past 43 years she worked as a personal and career counsellor at Ryerson University, before retiring in 2019. Sahri is a past co-chair of the Ontario Alliance of Career Development Practitioners (OACDP) as well as past co-chair of the Canadian Career Information Association (CCIA).
Honours received by Sahri include the 1998 Ontario College Counsellors Career Development Award bestowed by the Ontario College Counsellors Association; in 2011 the Ryerson University Counsellor Award and the Ryerson Faculty Association Career Achievement Award in 2016. Sahri has a long-standing interest in the area of ethics and ethical conduct as it pertains to the career development field.
Tracey Lloyd, PhD
Tracey is the Director of Career Services and Co-operative Education at Centennial College. Tracey has over 25 years of experience in career education and employment services, working in both the nonprofit and postsecondary sectors. She currently oversees career education programming and employer relations, and also co-chairs the College’s Graduate Employment Committee.
Prior to joining Centennial, Tracey was the Director of Employment Programs at Tropicana Community Services – a nonprofit organization that provides a range of services for youth, newcomers and members of the Black and Caribbean communities. She also taught in the Career and Work Counselling program at George Brown College. Currently, she serves on the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committees of Experiential and Work-Integrated Learning Ontario (EWO) and Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada (CEWIL).
Tracey believes that career education is a social imperative that has the potential to transform lives, helping people realize possibilities for themselves in the world of work.
David Hurlbut
David is a graduate of the Career and Work Counsellor Diploma program at George Brown College and holds a Master of Arts Education: Community College from Central Michigan University.
Over the past 20 years, David has worked in the not-for-profit and the private sectors with most of his career in the post secondary field at George Brown. While at the college, David had the great fortune to try on many hats including Career Advisor, Accessibility Consultant, Professor and in Management.
A reoccurring theme in David’s work is the support of people with disabilities. For his last two years at George Brown, David was assigned to the Work Integration Learning project and was the lead developer of a college wide system to better support students with disabilities moving into field placement. Over the course of his career David also served a three-year term with the MTCU Committee representing the OCCE, Postsecondary Advisory Committee on Disability Issues (PACDI) Chair Elect, Central Regional Chair, and active member of the Ontario College of Career Educators (OCCE).
Since retiring in 2021, David has volunteered at Woodgreen Community Services and with Able Sail Toronto. David is thrilled to now be a part of the CCDP Advisory Committee during these exciting times.
Jude Gaal
Jude Gaal came to the field of career development by accident and believes she is a perfect example of John Krumboltz’s Happenstance Learning Theory.
In 2004, as a disgruntled employee, working in the healthcare field, she followed up on an advertisement for training in the career development field. In 2006 she received a certificate in Career and Employment Coach Skills, and a year later received her certificate in Practical Workshop Facilitation.
Since 2007, she has worked in the not-for-profit sector providing career counselling and job search assistance in Winnipeg, Manitoba for a wide range of clients including newcomers and refugees. Jude was also an active member of the Manitoba Association of Career Development from its inception in 2013. Taking on the role of acquiring sponsors for the association’s annual conference, she attained the highest level of financial sponsorship in the history of conference for two years in a row.
A devoted life-long learner she also received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 2012 and expanded her knowledge in the field of career development by attaining the Career Development Practitioner Certificate from the University of Winnipeg in 2016. She has also attained certification in resume writing and employment strategy from the Career Professionals of Canada and received her accreditation from CDPCBO in July 2020.
In 2019 she relocated to Windsor, Ontario and took on the role of Career Advisor with the Career Development & Experiential Learning department at the University of Windsor. In this role she assisted professors by developing workshops on a variety of topics for their students. She also met students to assist them with their job search or career exploration and also facilitated an interview skills workshop for students on campus. She went on to assist the Co-op program as an Employment Readiness Program Facilitator preparing students for a successful co-op experience. She is an idealist who strongly believes that everyone has a right to work that is meaningful, fun, and provides a living wage.
Krystyna Zamko, BA, CCDP
Krystyna holds a Career & Work Counsellor Diploma from George Brown College and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from OCAD/Guelph and has over 22 years experience in employment services in the nonprofit sector.
Her career in employment counselling was the result of one door closing in order for another door to be opened! After graduating from university, she enjoyed several very different yet equally fulfilling positions as a Graphic Designer, Residential Real Estate Salesperson, independent business-owner (both in the transportation industry and fast food sector), along with being a self-taught culinarian having worked as a Pastry Cook in upscale restaurants and a 4-star hotel, while also working evenings as gig-worker in the catering sector.
Unfortunately, a workplace injury resulted in her having to close her culinary chapter, and move on to a new career … which ultimately has been the most rewarding career of them all! Her commitment to this industry motivated her to become certified as a Career Development practitioner in 2016.
She currently is employed as a Career Specialist with Achēv (formerly The Centre for Education & Training) for the past 11 years, along with having worked in the same capacity with Humber Employment Services and Community Microskills Development Centre. Along with having experience working remotely with internationally trained jobseekers by providing job search coaching support prior to their immigration to Canada, Krystyna currently enjoys supporting local jobseekers with finding gainful employment in line with their financial and career trajectory needs.