Well, the good news doesn’t stop coming! Last week we announced two staff “graduations,” with Erin Kang, our Events Manager, moving to Program Manager at Shape My City and Kyle Shantz, our Community Membership coordinator, being promoted to Marketing Manager.
Today, we’re thrilled to announce more changes, with four CSI staff moving into exciting new positions all within CSI:
Shona Fulcher – Director of Community
First, if you’ve spent any considerable amount of time at CSI you know Shona Fulcher. She started at CSI as a DECA, was hired as a Community Animator at CSI Spadina, promoted to CSI Spadina Manager, and today, drum roll please, she is CSI’s new Director of Community! In her new role, she will continue to manage CSI Spadina and 192 Spadina, and will now manage our other space teams and cross-space projects such as major events and the DECA program. The new role will ensure that our space teams are getting the support they need, and moving cohesively and in alignment with one another. We’re thrilled to have her join the Director team and leverage her incredible experience (she’s CSI’s 3rd longest standing staff member!).
“CSI showed me that work and passion do not have to happen separately and that changing the world for the better can be wicked fun too!” she said. “I am very excited to take the next step with CSI and I could not be happier that I get to work even more closely with even more people on our awesome teams. I. can’t. stop. smiling!”
Brittney Drysdale – Events Manager
Second, Brittney Drysdale, whom you may know as CSI Annex Community Animator, improv queen and CSI Summit facilitator extraordinaire, is moving into a new role as our Events Manager. Brittney has shown time and again that she possess stellar project management and organization skills (for example, managing our DECA program), and a true commitment to excellence. This new role will allow her to leverage these skills, while she ambitiously grows our events space rental business. This move also makes sense as Brittney has a deep understanding of the CSI Annex event space, which is our most complex one.
“It has been such a pleasure to work for and alongside the CSI Annex Community for the last three and a half years,” Brittney said. “Their work is nothing short of inspirational and on top of which they have all made this little farm girl’s dreams of moving to the big city a wonderful breeze. No word of a lie, a friend from back home visited me, and after running into three CSI people on a five-minute walk she asked me if I was famous or something. Or something, and how! I’m so looking forward to still being around and interacting with them in different ways and I know Anne is going to animate the living goodness out of this community. From the bottom of my heart, thank you!”
Anne Simpson-Porco – CSI Annex Community Animator
Thirdly, Anne Simpson-Porco our CSI Cafe Manger and the driving force behind the launch of the Cafe, will be shifting to the Community Animator role opened by Brittney moving into the Events Manager position. We’re so happy to have Anne shift to the Animator role, given her amazing and unique abilities around animation as well as her passion to use food to connect people, which is a perfect fit for CSI Annex. Some important context here is that there have been a lot of learnings for us around what it takes to run a cafe over the first three months of operations and we came to the realization that our initial desire to have a Cafe Manager manage a team, run/start a business AND animate a community was just too much for one role. This change allows us to still make all those things happen but simply separate the functions better so things are more manageable.
“I’m so stoked! This celebrates where we’ve gotten to as a cafe, as a team, and this change will allow us to bringing more intentionality to connecting food with innovation since, as we know, revolutions begin in the kitchen!” Anne said.
Alma San Ramon – CSI Cafe Manager
Finally, as for the CSI Cafe, the fabulous and talented Alma San Ramon (who has been working at the cafe since day one as a Cafe Staff member) will be the Acting Cafe Manager as we carry out the transition over the next few months. Alma joined CSI as a DECA last year in August and has been continually elevating her role and understanding of the community since. She has been operating a food consulting business over the last four years, and was an Assistant Production Manager at Dufflet Pastries for almost a decade before that.
“I was introduced to the CSI community last year and fell in love immediately!” Alma said. “It’s amazing to find a place where passion and collaboration are the pillars to create a better world. I am also happy to contribute with my expertise, and grateful for the opportunity to keep enjoying a great passion of mine: food.”
These changes are designed to elevate our staff and fine-tune our operations and services. Congratulations to all!
