Beverley Wybrow C.M.

 

Bev was President and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canada’s public foundation for women and girls, from 1991 till her retirement in 2014. The Foundation works to empower women and girls in Canada to move out of poverty, out of violence and into confidence.  Since 1991, the Foundation has raised money and supported more than 1,400 programs across Canada and is now one of the ten largest women’s foundations in the world. 

 

Bev is a founder and first chair of the 1985 inter-agency steering committee whose work led to the establishment of the Assaulted Women’s Helpline in Toronto. It is now an Ontario-wide 24 hour crisis line for women experiencing violence.

 

Her extensive volunteer experience includes Board Member and President of YWCA Toronto; Board Member of Global Women’s Funding Network and the Royal LePage Shelter Foundation; and Board member and Board Chair of MCC Toronto, the church that performed the first legal same-sex weddings in the world, and that worked to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada.

 

Bev received the 2007 City of Toronto’s Constance E. Hamilton Award and in 2009, a Women of Distinction Award from YWCA Toronto. On December 31, 2012, Bev was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada.