OTTAWA – Canadian Parents for French (CPF) is pleased to announce the selection of a new National Executive Director.
CPF congratulates Nicole Thibault on her appointment. Effective December 1, 2014, Ms. Thibault will be leading the Ottawa-based National staff under the stewardship of the CPF National Board of Directors.
Ms. Thibault brings over 20 years combined leadership experience as an executive director, vice principal, educational consultant and teacher whose personal and professional passion is centered on the promotion of a bilingual Canada for all those who call Canada home. She will replace Robert Rothon, whose three-year term as the former National Executive Director ended on August 22, 2014.
“We are very pleased with the decision to hire Nicole,” says Lisa Marie Perkins, Canadian Parents for French’s former National President and Chair of the Executive Director Search Committee. “Our efforts were focused on finding an individual who will be a visionary alongside the National Board and staff, and who is prepared to oversee the administration of this organization during a period of renewal and advancement. Ms. Thibault is committed to the direction that the National Board is taking, which was a crucial factor in our hiring decision, and her professional background complements the diverse skill set possessed by the rest of the National Office staff.”
Ms. Thibault’s career in education began as a classroom core French and French immersion teacher with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board in 1987. Ms. Thibault has also strategically led and supported teaching staff and students as a special assignment teacher and Vice Principal before moving on as a seconded professor at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Education, assisting in the management, delivery and facilitation of special projects related to conflict resolution and leading change within the education sector. She then served as Executive Director for the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers for almost ten years. From 2010-2014, Ms. Thibault took on consultant work with various cultural, educational and other not-for-profits.
Ms. Thibault is greatly supportive of CPF’s mission to provide official language education opportunities for all students in Canada and is looking forward to stepping into her new role in order to advocate for this cause at the federal level. “I strongly believe in individual bilingualism as a personal benefit and I am absolutely passionate about effective language learning as a way to engage more Canadian students so they too can be passionate about French as a reflection of Canada’s linguistic duality” says Ms. Thibault. “I have been afforded the opportunity to attend French language schools and a bilingual post-secondary institution and to move freely from one official-language-dominant work milieu to the other. I am living proof that bilingualism works, and every child in Canada should be afforded this same right.'”