Message from LEAF’s Board Chair
Dear LEAF Supporters, Partners, and Friends:
As LEAF prepares to celebrate 40 years of fighting for gender justice, I write to share some important updates about our organizational leadership.
It is with deep appreciation (and more than a hint of sadness) that we announce the departure of our Executive Director & General Counsel, Pam Hrick, at the end of June 2025.
For over four years, Pam has provided extraordinary intersectional feminist leadership at LEAF, tirelessly championing the rights of women, girls, trans, and non-binary people across Canada. On behalf of the entire Board of Directors, we extend our heartfelt thanks to Pam for her unwavering dedication, vision, passion, and contributions—LEAF has been incredibly fortunate to benefit from her strength, drive, and compassion.
During Pam’s tenure, LEAF has flourished and accomplished so much. We haven’t just named our intersectional feminist values – we have lived them.
Together, we adopted a broader gender inclusive mandate and developed an evidence and human-rights based organizational position on decriminalizing sex work. We have passionately advocated for more options for restorative and transformative justice for sexual assault survivors, and for meaningful access to reproductive justice across Canada. We launched a call for a Gender-Based Violence Commissioner in Canada to more effectively address the epidemic of gender-based violence. We have solidified LEAF’s reputation and expertise as a leader in combating technology-facilitated gender-based violence through legal and social change.
We have revitalized LEAF’s public legal education program, developed countless provincial and federal law reform submissions, participated in the Mass Casualty Commission, and continued LEAF’s cutting edge intervention work across Canada – including important cases about the scope of the equality rights provisions in the Charter, the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, and the rights of trans and non-binary youth.
We established and strengthened partnerships across the feminist sector and beyond. We welcomed new LEAF volunteer branches in Calgary, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Winnipeg, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador.
And, despite facing the continued impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we have strengthened LEAF’s culture as a stable feminist employer with fundamentally sound financial foundations, stronger governance, and enhanced benefits and working conditions for LEAF’s staff team.
Thanks to Pam’s leadership, LEAF is far stronger now than when she joined. She leaves us well-positioned to continue our work to advance gender equality in a social and political climate that makes this advocacy more urgent than ever. And on a more personal note, I feel deeply fortunate to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Pam as Vice-Chair and now Chair. Her passion for this work is nothing short of inspiring, and working alongside her has been a highlight of my professional life.
Though we are saddened by Pam’s departure, we are also excited for the new chapter of LEAF’s leadership. Recognizing the significant structural demands placed on a single Executive Director & General Counsel role, LEAF’s Board has decided to reinstate separate positions of Executive Director and Legal Director. We look forward to the vision and energy the new leadership will bring to this crucial work.
Today we are launching our search for LEAF’s new Executive Director, who will focus on providing strategic direction to LEAF’s work and leadership focusing on solidifying and strengthening all aspects of LEAF’s operations. We’ll have more to share about the Legal Director position in the months to come.
At a time when the rights of women, girls, trans, and non-binary people are increasingly under attack, LEAF’s work to advance gender equality across Canada remains as crucial as ever. This year, we look forward to celebrating 40 years of LEAF’s important legacy while building on Pam’s remarkable work. With strong, stable, and feminist leadership, we remain committed to creating a future rooted in genuine equality for all.
Thank you Pam, and thank you to all of you for continuing to support this vital organization.
Hadiya Roderique, Chair
LEAF Board of Directors
Farewell Message from LEAF’s Executive Director & General Counsel
Dear LEAF Community:
It has been the greatest privilege of my professional life to steward LEAF as its Executive Director and General Counsel.
But this hasn’t merely been a professional journey for me. Growing up as the child of a single mother in London, Ontario, I learned very early about the systemic barriers that exist to women’s equality. I also learned about how vital it is for those who are able to advocate for change to do so.
It wasn’t until I went to law school that I learned about LEAF and how it had shaped the law to fight for women’s equality and combat gender-based violence in Canada. I couldn’t have imagined at that time being entrusted to lead this organization that had been so instrumental to advancing my mother’s rights, my wife’s rights, and my own rights. While there have been many highlights of which I am incredibly proud, one of the most meaningful is representing LEAF as counsel in its Supreme Court intervention in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, a case about access to financial compensation for intimate partner violence.
The need for LEAF’s work is truly as great as ever. As honoured as I am to have held this role, I am equally excited to see the vision and energy that new leadership will bring to LEAF’s work at this crucial time.
I remain a strong supporter of LEAF and am committed to its mandate to achieve substantive equality for all women, girls, trans, and non-binary people in Canada. How I support fulfilling that mandate will simply look different come July.
As LEAF begins this exciting new chapter, I want to thank the Board for trusting me with the responsibility to lead this organization, all of my brilliant colleagues and LEAF’s volunteers for being part of achieving so much over these years, and all of LEAF’s donors and funders for being partners in driving forward LEAF’s crucial work. Thanks to all of you, LEAF will continue to be at the forefront of the fight for gender justice in Canada.
Pam Hrick, Executive Director & General Counsel
LEAF
