ReMEMBER Staff Edition: Janelle

This woman will be your cheerleader. She is always the one to encourage and affirm others around her. Though we never get enough of Janelle (she works from out of the office), we always look forward to her positive emails and energizing phone calls. No staff meeting is boring in her presence. She is life to the office even from afar. Janelle Frail: Public Engagement Coordinator 1. What's your role at ACIC? I’m the Atlantic Regional Public Engagement Coordinator with ACIC and I started last September. I work remotely at the NSAC International Office in Truro (where coincidentally I went to school!). My two main areas of work are with the ICN (Inter-Council Network) on a multi-year program titled Exploring Public Engagement Effectiveness in Canada. This work involved gauging what type of public engagement is happening in Canada (my area of focus is in the Atlantic), what are our challenges and our successes and ultimately what are the good practices taking place. Members of ACIC may know me because of the interviews and focus groups that I conducted throughout the region during the late fall and winter. The next phase of this work includes Knowledge Hubs – convening public engagement practitioners to explore a Partnerships and Collaboration in public engagement with the end goal being good practices material for a PE Toolkit that will be launched next year. My other work involves bringing ACIC Members together for a Collaborative Public Engagement Project. What can ACIC Members work on together? What topic are many Members interested in and able to collaborate on? This work envisions ACIC Members using their collective abilities and ideas to create a public engagement campaign that reaches a wide audience. I will be meeting with Members over the next while to work on bringing them and project together. 2. Why do you love working at ACIC? I love working at ACIC because of the great people both in the office and amongst the member groups. I love the opportunities to connect people and to see all the great work members are doing. 3. Favorite Quote? “I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.” - Leo Tolstoy. I’m trying to figure out how to ‘get off the man’s back’. Does this mean being a hermit in the woods? Living and working with partners overseas? Growing my own food? The challenge for me is to figure out what works for me, what I can sustain emotionally, mentally, physically and financially and trying to make it work. 4. Something we might not know about you... I’ve moved home! I currently live right beside my parents in the same small community I grew up in (Upper Rawdon, East Hants, NS). 5. What are you currently reading? I love to read! I’m currently reading the third book of the Game of Thrones (by George R. R. Martin) fantasy series. I love reading all genres of books from historical fiction to life adventure to young adult fiction. I like to switch it up too so after this book I want to read, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts which is a autobiography and from what John (my partner and book-selection helper) tells me is a gripping adventure where truth is stranger than fiction.