Three Directors from the WAIMH Board, Chaya Kulkarni, Catherine Maguire and Hisako Watanabe, will end their four-year term of office in June 2024. They have worked with great dedication and warmth on behalf of WAIMH during their four-year term.
President Campbell Paul steps down from his position as the President of WAIMH and becomes the Past President, while President-Elect Astrid Berg starts her term as the new President of WAIMH.
According to the Bylaws of WAIMH, two Directors will now be elected by the members of WAIMH and one will be appointed by the new President at the beginning of her term.
WAIMH Central Office and the Board nominating committee have received four eligible candidates. The nominees are:
Nicole Letourneau
Robert Meeder
David Oppenheim
Julie Ribaudo
The four candidates for the WAIMH Board of Directors 2024-28 are presented below. The materials (including Letters of interest) are available to WAIMH members online at WAIMH website.
The election
All WAIMH members (2024, 2023) are allowed to take part in the election taking place 5th February – 3rd March 2024. The voting time ends at 23.59 (EET) on March 3rd, 2024.
The full process has been presented previously to members via e-mail, and you can read more on the WAIMH website.
Each member has one vote. The two Candidates with the most votes, shall be elected.
All members will receive a link to an electronic vote to the e-mail address associated with their WAIMH membership. If you do not receive the link, please check your spam folder.
All members who make their payment prior to the voting time ending, have the right to vote. If a member renews after the voting period started, the link will be sent to the member within a week. Renew your WAIMH membership or join WAIMH online.
Candidates in alphabetical order
Nicole Letourneau
Nicole Letourneau is a Full Professor in the Faculty of Nursing and Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Canada. As the Research Excellence Chair in Parent and Child Health and Scientific Director of the Alliance against Violence and Adversity, she studies child mental health/development in the context of parental depression, violence, and other early adversities. She focuses on understanding how adversity negatively affects children’s health/development, then creates/tests/implements effective interventions. She employs innovative knowledge translation to influence policy/practice. She has extensive experience in board governance, as Director, Canadian Institutes for Health Research and President, College of Registered Nurses of Alberta.
Robert Meeder
Dr Rob Meeder is a pediatrician with a practice devoted entirely to mental health and behaviour. He works alongside families and strongly believes that relationships drive mental well-being. Rob is Medical Director of the Family Child and Youth Mental Health Program at Waypoint Centre in Ontario. He has obtained a BSc (Physics) and MSc (Physiology and Biophysics). He completed his Doctor of Medicine at McMaster University and Pediatrics at Western University before moving to Orillia Ontario to take on a general consulting practice and held various leadership roles before moving to Waypoint in 2020. He is currently completing a Fellowship in Early Relational Health at UMass.
David Oppenheim
David Oppenheim, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology and former Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel. He also heads the Center for the Study of Child Development in that University. Dr. Oppenheim’s studies the role of parental Insightfulness and parent-child open communication in the organization of attachment relationships throughout childhood. Dr. Oppenheim’s studies these questions in longitudinal studies including typically developing children, children with atypical development such as Autism and Intellectual Disability, and children at high risk such as those in foster care and those whose parents experienced trauma.
Julie Ribaudo
Dr Julie Ribaudo is a Clinical Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan, USA. She is an IMH psychotherapist, who has worked in multiple sectors, including community mental health, child welfare, early education, and public health, before moving into private practice and eventually to her professorship at the University of Michigan. She is a longstanding member of WAIMH, past president of the Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health, and past member of the WAIMH Affiliates Council. She has served on several advisory boards and provided peer-review for several journals, including the IMHJ.
