LISA SHYMKO
Chair
Lisa Shymko holds an M.A. in Political Science (University of Toronto) and a Four-year Honours B.A. with a Specialist in Canadian constitutional law and Soviet history and a Double Minor in Economics and Slavic Studies (University of St. Michael's College - University of Toronto).
Ms. Shymko brings unique insight into all aspects of communications, having spent decades in the media, nongovernmental, and financial services sectors.
Her news articles and opinion pieces on global security issues have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The American Spectator, Maclean’s magazine, and Ukraine’s daily newspaper, The Day (Hazeta Den’).
Ms. Shymko served as a media advisor to Ukraine’s first ambassador to Canada— former Soviet dissident Levko Lukianenko — writing several editorials for the ambassador, including a 1993 op-ed for the Globe and Mail.
Lisa Shymko was appointed by the City of Toronto to serve on the Toronto Public Library Board, and was later elected Chair of its Services, Planning and Capital Committee. She has managed two international book exhibitions in the House of Commons in Ottawa and the National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Ms. Shymko managed several international development projects, including the Ukraine-Canada Journalists Exchange Program for the International Renaissance Foundation of the Soros Foundations Network.
She was the founding Director of the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Resource Centre at the National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine in Kyiv, established by Canadian Friends of Ukraine in cooperation with the Government of Canada.
At the invitation of the Government of Canada, she has testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and collaborated on the drafting of historic Canadian legislation recognizing Ukraine’s Stalin-era famine as genocide, for which her efforts were officially acknowledged in the House of Commons in 2008. Between 2010–2015, she was part of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s delegation on three official visits to Ukraine.
As Director of Corporate Communications for BCU Financial Group, she initiated the creation of, and later served as Supervising Director of Forum TV — a community-based television program supported by BCU Foundation and broadcast nationally on Rogers-OMNI (2012–2017).
Ms. Shymko has chaired and held various board positions in many Ukrainian-Canadian nongovernmental organizations, including, the Ukraine Support Fund, BCU Foundation, the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW), the Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League of Canada and the Ukrainian Canadian Women’s Council.
As a member of the Canada Ukraine Foundation’s advisory committee for the Holodomor National Awareness Tour, she chaired the Canadian film premiere of Hunger for Truth: The Rhea Clyman Story (2018) and edited the French translation of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory’s publication, entitled L’Holodomor: Génocide du Peuple Ukrainien, produced by the Canada Ukraine Foundation (2020).
Ms. Shymko is past Chair of Guardian Angels Ukraine, a veteran’s rehabilitation project which operated in Ukraine under the auspices of the LUCW, in cooperation with NATO’s Medical Rehabilitation Trust Fund (2014–2017).
She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the 2021 Virtual NGO Forum of the 65th Session of the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women and the NATO Association of Canada conference, Crisis Response: Is Canada Prepared? — Unrest on NATO’s Eastern Flank: Ukraine, Baltic States, Russia (2017).
Lisa Shymko is the recipient of several awards, including: The Presidential Order of Merit (2009, Ukraine); Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012, Canada);
The Medal of Honour of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (2017).