Our Board and Staff
Current Staff
Emily Coldwell – Program Director
Emily is a previous Power of Hope youth, and her work here began in 2013. She has since been an arts facilitator, camp manager, book-keeper, administrative manager, and program director among a variety of other roles. She is passionate about connection and helping others become empowered where they are at. She completed PYE’s Heart of Facilitation training in 2018 and has been deeply involved in program development since that time. As program director, Emily creates and manages our camps and trainings, in addition to overseeing the daily operations of the organization. Passionate about creating music, writing, and self-discovery through the arts, Emily brings a deep passion for youth work and a balanced perspective to the organization.
Current Board Members
Caroline Weatherhead – Chair
Founder of Gatherings Co., Caroline has set the stage for many visionary humans over her 20+ years managing events. Focusing on education, community development and the arts Caroline nurtures positive, productive relationships both within her event teams and with organizational partners. As a seasoned event manager, Caroline has conceptualized, planned and overseen the onsite execution of events such as corporate conferences, non-profit fundraisers, university-continuing education programs, trade shows, and festivals. Gathering with clear intention results in huge capacity for connection and shifts towards our shared visions. Caroline continues to be inspired by the possibilities when we bump into each other’s edges and find new growth in the spaces created between.
Jonathan Bean – Vice Chair
Jonathan Bean worked for and volunteered with the Teen Journey society as a camp director and board member, and has been working and volunteering in transformational camps with local organizations since 2001. He has also been educating public-facing staff in the private sector for 10 years teaching inter-personal skills and informing people on how to deal with conflict in their personal and professional lives, in pursuit of a lifelong goal to help people understand and relate to each other. He has 2 decades of firsthand experience in how creative expression and peak experiences can unlock the potential inherent in each of us.
Colleen McCormick
Colleen McCormick manages the social innovation file in the Ministry of Social Development. Her focus is to maximize social innovation in BC. She is engaged with the BC Partners for Social Impact and the Assistant Deputy Minister’s Committee for Non-Profit Partnerships, and was responsible for organizing the Premier’s Non-Profit Partnerships Social Innovation Summit. Colleen is also the National Chair of the New Professionals for the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, founder of Social Innovators Network nonprofit, and TEDxMileZero organizer. She has an MBA from Royal Roads University and is currently taking the Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo.
Sarah Frizelle
Sarah is a counselor in private practice in Victoria BC and offers holistic counselling to individuals, couples and families. She has worked with youth in roles of educator, psychotherapist and wilderness guide for over 25 years, sometimes combining all three roles in nature-based therapy or eco-psychology with individuals and groups. She has worked with students in alternative learning environments in Ontario, Massachusetts and on Vancouver Island, and has guided groups throughout North America.
Sarah’s motivation is to support positive personal, family and cultural level changes. She embraces the idea of transformative learning and is dedicated to supporting the programs PoH offers to unleash the creative gifts and potential of young people to heal and transform our world. She finds PoH’s work particularly compelling at this time to counter narratives of bleakness and despair, inspiring creativity, collaboration and innovation to power of hope.
Interested in joining our board? We would love to hear from you!
We would especially love to involve more Indigenous, Black, People of colour, youth, elders, and members of the LGBTQ2S+ community in our board and will give priority to people who identify as such in order to amplify and uplift those voices of our community.
Please reach out to so that we can get to know each other better.