Shenalie Fernando Appointed Chief Operations Officer

Shenalie
We are very excited to announce that Shenalie Fernando will be joining us over the next 6 weeks to oversee a variety of critical jobs at the Canadian Centre for Men and Families. We welcome Shenalie to our team and look forward to her contributions to our growing agency.

Here’s what she has to say:

I am very excited to say that I have been brought onboard as the new COO for the Canadian Center for Men and Families. My name is Shenalie Fernando and I am currently a 5th year Space Engineering student at the Lassonde School of Engineering.

Although my degree may be in the engineering field I have accumulated quite a bit of business related experience throughout the past 4 years in addition to my many varied extracurricular activities at York University.

Over the past 4 years at York University, I have served as the Orientation Chair for the first ever Lassonde School of Engineering Orientation week as well as being heavily involved within the engineering community. I have been active within the York University Engineering society for 4 years and President for 2 years as well as playing the role of Operations director at the York University Rover Team. Through these experiences I have gained experience in finance, sponsorship, marketing as well as operations that I hope to this knowledge to my current position.

In addition to my extracurricular activities I have also had the opportunity to work with PEO and ESSCO to organize a professional development conference for engineering students across Ontario as the Chair of the conference. Over the last year, I have also taken a very large step towards expanding my business knowledge and experience. I also worked towards and received a certificate of entrepreneurship from Technion institute of Technology where I learned about startups and how to successfully get a company off the ground using marketing and financial tactics.

I hope to bring my skillset and experiences to my current COO position at the Canadian Centre for Men and Families to help the organization expand their programs and financial development. I am really looking forward to helping with the program creation of Fathering After Separation, which I believe to be a very important learning experience for participants. The program development is working towards bridging the gap between services provided for men who are encountering divorce and separation and need a safe space to communicate and address their concerns about their children and themselves. In addition I look forward to introducing new programs that will be able to help more men and families overtime as well as raising funds to sustains these programs.

I feel that it is a great fit for me as it presents another opportunity to increase my business experience in addition to learning the inner working of charities and being a part of a team that works towards helping individuals improve their wellbeing. I look forward to affecting change in our community.

– Shenalie Fernando