Lili-Anna Pereša, president and executive director of Centraide of Greater Montreal, has been named a member of the independent advisory board that will nominate candidates to the Supreme Court of Canada (SCOC).
Born in Montreal, Pereša is a trained engineer, having graduated from École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1987.
She also holds a graduate degree in management from McGill University and a master’s degree in political science from the Sorbonne in Paris.
She has been president and executive director of Centraide of Greater Montreal since 2013.
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At the age of 25, Pereša became a volunteer aid worker, teaching in Malawi with the World University Service of Canada.
She later worked for Oxfam-Quebec as a management consultant to Burkina Secours in Burkina Faso before joining CARE Austria and working in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Pereša has led several community and humanitarian organizations, including Les petits frères des pauvres, the YWCA of Montreal and Amnesty International France.
She served as executive director of ONE DROP from 2009 to 2012.
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She is a member of the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the International Women’s Forum, the Amies d’affaires and the Advisory Committee for the 2017 Summit of the Mallet Institute.
Pereša is also a member of the National Executive Committee of the 2017 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference, a board member of the Domaine Forget and the Mobile Giving Foundation Canada.
Pereša’s involvement in humanitarian aid has earned her numerous distinctions, including the Mercure Leadership Germaine-Gibara Award at the 2016 Mercuriades, the Meritorious Service Award for Community Service from the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, an honorary doctorate from Université de Montréal and being named a Fellow of Engineers Canada.
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The independent SCOC advisory board’s job is to identify suitable candidates who are “jurists of the highest calibre, functionally bilingual and representative of the diversity of our great country,” according to the news release.
The aim is to encourage open transparency and set a higher standard for accountability.
Pereša joins former Prime Minister of Canada Kim Campbell, who will serve as the board’s chairperson, as well as Camille Cameron, dean of the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University; Jeff Hirsch, president of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada; Stephen Kakfwi, former premier of the Northwest Territories; Richard J. Scott, former Chief Justice of the Manitoba Court of Appeal and Susan Ursel, a senior partner with a Toronto firm.
rachel.lau@globalnews.ca
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