Nancy Reynolds and Suzanne Tough are Max Bell Foundation and Burns Memorial Fund Fellows

Burns Memorial Fund and Max Bell Foundation are pleased to announce the appointment of Nancy Reynolds and Suzanne Tough as Senior Policy Fellows. The jointly-funded Fellowships launch a partnership between the two foundations in support of evidence-based public policy to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and youth.

Ms. Reynolds and Dr. Tough will work together for a two-year term to examine issues related to permanency and continuity of care, with the goal of advancing policy supporting resilience and stable relational networks of vulnerable children and youth in Alberta. Stakeholder engagement and co-design will be integral components of the work.

The Fellows are experts in child and youth health and well-being and have extensive experience in government, not-for-profit organizations, academia, research, and training.

Ms. Reynolds currently consults for a variety of organizations with a focus on early brain/child development, child and youth mental health and well-being, and public policy. For the past nine years, she has been a faculty member at the Max Bell Public Policy Training Institute. Ms. Reynolds was the inaugural President and CEO of the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research (now Policywise), prior to which she held senior executive leadership positions in the provincial ministries of Health and Children’s Services.

Dr. Tough is a Professor with the Departments of Pediatrics and Community Health Sciences in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Her contributions to the scientific and policy literature span reproductive health, prenatal care, maternal mental health, adverse childhood experiences, early childhood development, resiliency, and self-regulation. Dr. Tough is the Principal Investigator of the All our Families Cohort, a pregnancy cohort study of 3,200 mother-child pairs beginning in 2008 that has followed mothers from pregnancy through childhood.  She was the inaugural Scientific Director of the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research (now Policywise).

Ms. Reynolds and Dr. Tough will officially begin their Fellowship terms on November 1, 2017. A launch and stakeholder consultation are planned for February, 2018. More details will be forthcoming.

For more information on this initiative, please follow the updates at www.maxbell.org/our-work/programs/senior-fellows-program.

About Burns Memorial Fund: the Fund works to meet the health, education and recreation needs of low-income children and youth in Calgary. Burns Memorial Fund administers its own programs to provide financial assistance to children, youth and their families; allocates funding to Calgary-based charities working with vulnerable children and youth; and participates in community-wide collaborations intended to address the systemic issues which negatively impact low-income children, youth and their families.