Research Associates

Maureen Molot
Michael Orsini
Elizabeth Whitmore
Miriam Fry

Lewis Auerbach has interests in governance, accountability, performance auditing, and organizational design. Currently he is the head of Auerbach Consulting Services. From 1988 to 2002 he was a Director, Audit Operations, for the Auditor General of Canada and the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Previous to his work in the Office of the Auditor General, Mr. Auerbach was a senior research and policy advisor with the Treasury Board Secretariat, the CRTC, and the Science Council of Canada. He has also worked as a private consultant for Woods Gordon, and as a radio and TV producer for CBC and TV Ontario. Mr. Auerbach's voluntary experience includes service as President of Tamir Foundation, a residential facility for developmentally disabled adults. He is currently President at Options Bytown, which provides supportive housing in Ottawa for the "hard to house". He has also served as a citizen representative on the City of Ottawa Task Force on Property Tax Assessment Issues, and its Public Arts Committee, as well as various Boards and Committees.

Mr. Auerbach has an BA magna cum laude and MA from Harvard in the History of Science, and an MBA from Yale.

Susan Carter is a practitioner and analyst in the Third Sector. Her work addresses the development and capacity of the non-profit and community sector, and the relationship between the sector and governments, both domestically and internationally. She held senior positions in several departments in the federal government, focused on social policy and federal-provincial relations. She left the federal public service in 1994 to work as Associate Executive Director of the Canadian Council on Social Development - a non-profit organization in the field of social policy and research.

She was a founding member of the Voluntary Sector Roundtable and in this capacity led the creation of the Broadbent Panel on Governance and Accountability in the Voluntary Sector. With the launch of the Voluntary Sector Initiative in 2000, she created and led the Secretariat which supported the voluntary sector's participation. Since the completion of the VSI, she has she has taught and conducted research and analysis on issues of the Third Sector. She holds a Masters Degree in political science from the University of Toronto and a diploma from the Ecole nationale d'administration in France.

Over the past twenty years Martin Itzkow held many senior positions in the provincial government, the voluntary and non-profit sector, as well as the private sector in Manitoba. Since 1996 he has been engaged in many research, project management and public policy initiatives focusing on: strengthening the forces of social capital; building sustainable, resilient, healthy and capacity rich communities; realigning the discussion of the voluntary and non-profit sector in a broader context of its impact in social and economic development of community; developing socially innovative approaches to engage citizens in relation to government, business and organized labour; social network development in community leadership and conceptualizing information communication technology (ICT) processes to build and strengthen community action. Representing CVSRD in 2004, he was the only representative from Canada on an international panel in the Peoples Republic of China on "Public Sector Reform and the Non-Profit Sector".

In government he was responsible for the development of immigration policy and was an active member of a team of provincial negotiators engaged in a range of provincial-federal agreements related directly to provincial immigration policy and practice. Also he was responsible for international immigration promotion and conducted seminars throughout Asia.

Recently he has been engaged in developing collaborative organizations on the topic of community leadership, establishing an umbrella organization for the voluntary and non-profit sector in Manitoba, evaluating reporting relationships between government and the voluntary and non-profit sector, and developing transformative strategies within Aboriginal leadership for the voluntary and non-profit sector. He is actively involved in researching and applying innovative approaches to social network development and community leadership by using diverse distributed leadership concepts. Martin Itzkow is now involved in international work in adapting and integrating new learning systems within Northern Indian educational and learning organizations.

Josh Greenberg received his Ph.D. in Sociology from McMaster University in 2003. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication and is cross-appointed to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, both at Carleton University. His expertise and areas of publication focus on issues of media representation and access, particularly for resource-poor organizations and groups. He is currently working on a long-term study examining news coverage of the voluntary sector in Canada, and the communications activities and media strategies of non-governmental organizations. This is a project he began as a SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University.

In addition to his research, Dr. Greenberg serves in an advisory capacity to non-profit organizations on the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategic communication campaigns.

Rachel Laforest is an Assistant Professor at the School of Policy Studies, Queen's University. She is also head of the Public Policy and the Third Sector Initiative. She completed her Ph.D. in Public Policy in 2005 at Carleton University on new forms of governance and their impact on the voluntary sector in Canada. Her research interests focus on the study of the voluntary sector and public interest groups, with special emphasis on representation, advocacy and new forms of political activism. Her research has included examining policy-related issues involved in building partnerships between Governments and the voluntary sector and managing funding relationships. Rachel earned both a BA in History and an MSc in Political Science at the Université de Montréal.

Dr. Maureen Appel Molot is a Distinguished Research Professor at, and a former director, of The Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University. Her current research, which focuses on the auto industry and Canada's role in the development and diffusion of fuel cell technology is funded by AUTO21, a National Centres of Excellence initiative.

She is a past faculty Director of CVSRD and a contributor to, and participant in, a number of CVSRD projects. She is currently a board member of Community Foundations of Canada and a member of the Board of Governors of the Canada School of Public Service. She is also a Director of the Harry P. Ward Foundation (located in Ottawa) and vice-chair of the board of FOCAL, the Canadian Foundation for the Americas. She is a former chair and long-time board member of the Community Foundation of Ottawa.

Michael Orsini is Associate Professor in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, and Principal Scientist with the Institute of Population Health at the University. He obtained his Ph.D. in public policy from Carleton University in 2002. Orsini's article, "The Politics of Naming, Blaming, and Claiming: HIV, Hepatitis C, and the Emergence of Blood Activism in Canada," won the John McMenemy Prize for the best article published in 2002 in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

He recently completed a CIHR-funded study that examined how the "illness narratives" of Hepatitis C patients can better inform policy, and is now embarking on a new SSHRC-funded project titled “Health Policy from Below? Social Movements and Contested Illness in Canada and the U.S.” (with Professor Miriam Smith). He is also a co-investigator on a large CIHR project examining the impact of globalization on the health of Canadians, which is being led by Professor Ronald Labonté, a Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa.

Professor Orsini recently co-edited Critical Policy Studies, which was published by UBC Press in 2007. He has also published articles in Social Policy and Administration, Social and Legal Studies, and The Canadian Journal of Urban Research, among others.

Recently retired from academia, Elizabeth Whitmore (Professor Emerita from Carleton's School of Social Work) now has time to devote to areas of particular interest to her, including community based research and evaluation, and building partnerships between university and community groups. The years spent working in the field after completing an MSW (Boston University) grounded her commitment to community work, a commitment that has continued throughout her career in academia. She began teaching at Dalhousie University in 1974, earned a PhD in program evaluation at Cornell University in 1988, and joined the Carleton faculty in 1991. Her focus has also been on participatory approaches to research and evaluation and, in 1995 developed a community based approach to teaching the graduate level research and evaluation course. The interest generated resulted in the founding of the Community based Research Network of Ottawa (CBRNO) in 1999 which, among other things, links community and university interests and expertise. Over the years, she has authored numerous articles on this topic as well as an edited volume entitled: Understanding and practicing participatory evaluation (Jossey-Bass) She also brings considerable international experience and interest to her CVSRD role, as a founding member of the Canadian Consortium for International Social Development (funded by IDRC) and the co-author of two books on international social development and social work.

Miriam Fry recently left the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation after a long career as a working journalist and programming manager. She now has the time and the editorial freedom to concentrate on areas of particular interest. These include the relationship between the working media and not-for-profit community organizations, especially the links for partnerships and relationship-building with the community at large. As well, she has a focus on the skills required to build effective teams in small organizations. Over the years, she has forged ties with organizations focusing on literacy, community leadership and access. Miriam has a BA in French literature and an MA in Public Administration, both from Carleton University.