About Us
Meet our team!
Meet the National Board
The CSSDP board members work together in our fundraising, outreach, and political advocacy subcommittees to support our chapters across Canada, develop our annual national conference, and reach our local, national, and international goals. The national team works hard to connect with chapter members across Canada, spread harm reduction and achieve drug policy reform.


Kira London-Nadeau
Chair
Kira is currently pursuing her PhD research as a Vanier Scholar at the Université de Montréal, examining the relationships between cannabis use and mental health in sexually and gender diverse youth. Kira has chaired the national board of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) since 2018 and is involved locally in Montréal with both CSSDP and VoxCann, a bilingual cannabis education initiative for youth, which she co-founded in 2018. She is also a strategic advisor for the national Cannabis & Psychosis project of the Schizophrenia Society of Canada.

Erika Dupuis
Board of Directors
Erika (they/them) is a recent graduate from the Master of Social Work program at Ryerson University. During their graduate studies, Erika previously worked with the Ryerson CSSDP as the Vice President of Operations. Erika is particularly interested in bridging the gap between youth justice policy and decriminalization/legalization.

Rhiannon Carruthers
Board of Directors
Rhiannon is a graduate of Interactive Digital Media at University of Toronto. She currently works as a youth harm reduction worker in Toronto's nightlife community. Her interests include drug education, harm reduction at parties and festivals, and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, MDMA, and ketamine.

Alex(andra) Holtom
Board of Directors
Alexandra [she/elle] is a recent graduate of the Master of Social Work program at McGill University. She currently serves as the chapter liaison of the National Board of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and as a writer, editor, translator, and social media and communications lead for The Drug Hub. In addition to these roles, she works as a translator and knowledge mobilization expert for several harm reduction projects across the country. As a person with living expertise of drug use, she is passionate about harm reduction, drug policy, decriminalization, and abolition.

Taylor Fleming
Board of Directors
Taylor is a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program at UBC, and a research coordinator at the BC Centre on Substance Use. Her research examines the intersection of housing policy, drug policy, and harm reduction, specifically as it relates to the ongoing overdose crisis.

Matthew Bonn
Board of Directors
Matthew Bonn is the program coordinator of the Canadian Association of People
Who Use Drugs, national board member with the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and is a knowledge translator for the Dr. Peters Centre. Matt was one of the cofounders of HaliFIX Overdose
Prevention Society which implemented Atlantic Canada’s first Overdose Prevention Site. Matt is also a Canadian Editorial Consultant with Filter – Magazine, a non-profit media outlet based out of New York.
He is also a freelance writer with By Lines in Filter-Magazine, CATIE, The Coast and The Conversation. Matt has a business marketing diploma and he is a 3rd year student for Business Commerce at St.
Mary’s University (pronouns he/him).

Tess Walker
Co-Treasurer
Tess is a graduate from Concordia University, with a BA in Political Science and Human Rights. She is currently the Co-Treasurer for the national board of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, and former member of the CSSDP Concordia Chapter. Tess has a passion for youth-centred and evidence-based approaches to encourage safer drug practices across Canada and abroad. Tess also has an interest in how barriers such as housing status, criminal records, food security and economic conditions impact the success of public health initiatives.

Mary Kelly
Board Member
Mary is a student at the University of British Columbia, majoring in Anthropology. Alongside sitting on the CSSDP national board she is an organizer at the Vancouver Community Fridges, an executive on the UBC Health Equity Club, and a member of the CSSDP Vancouver Chapter. In the past Mary worked as a frontline outreach and overdose response worker in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where she learnt the approaches to harm reduction and substance use. Mary is interested in drug laws and the criminal justice system in Canada, in particular the reliance of prison as a whole and the alternatives for prison that support incarcerated people who use drugs.

Hasham Kamran
Co-Treasurer
Hasham Kamran is a Master of Public Health student at Simon Fraser University. Leveraging over five years of front-line shelter experience, he has been committed to improving the lives of Canada’s most vulnerable populations. In addition, Hasham has five years of research and evaluation experience in public health research in Calgary. He believes that smart public health policy coupled with research can produce big impacts and is thrilled to become a part of the CSSDP to help advocate for better drug policies in the country.

Avery Sapoznikow
Board of Directors
Avery is a 3rd year MSc Counselling Psychology student at the University of Calgary. His thesis topic focuses on exploring opioid use from the perspective of self-identified former opioid users. Avery graduated from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in 2017, earning an honours degree in Psychology. During his undergraduate studies, he conducted his honours research on the interactions of cannabis and attention and ADHD. Avery has also published research on the Amazonian hallucinogenic tea, Ayahuasca, analyzing differences between the impacts of the experiences based on several contexts of use.
Avery has been on the CSSDP National Board in various roles since 2016 and was previously associated with the UBC Okanagan chapter of CSSDP as the Vice President in the the 2016-2017 school year. Avery’s interest in drug policy stems from his perception of the inadequacies of the current existence of drug policy in Canada and the disproportionate impact of these policies on Indigenous and POC communities.

Matthew McLaughlin
Board of Directors
Matthew McLaughlin studies Economics and Urban Systems at McGill University. He has a deep passion for public policy, serving as Executive Director of the McGill Policy Association, President of NDP McGill, and a communications assistant at the Max Bell School of Public Policy. Matthew is Co-Chair of CSSDP’s McGill Chapter. A dedicated mental health advocate, Matthew sits on the national board of directors of Kids Help Phone and also serves as the co-chair of the organization’s national youth council.

Sanjana Mitra
Board of Directors
Sanjana is currently completing her PhD at the University of British Columbia, studying the socioeconomic and structural drivers of overdose. With a strong foundation in public health practice, Sanjana’s training has taken place over diverse settings in Canada and aboard. Her interests primarily lie around health equity, social exclusion, harm reduction and more broadly, the intersection between policy and health outcomes.
Advising Team
The CSSDP Board of Directors relies on our mentors and advisors to help strategically brainstorm, plan, and execute essential functions for the organization as a whole. Our advisors provide insight, help and support to the CSSDP national team, as well as individual chapters across Canada. Their invaluable advice and experience is integral to how CSSDP functions on a local, national and international level, and they help the national team make and reach our collective goals.
Nazlee Maghsoudi
Strategic Advisor
Nazlee has been involved in the development of evidence-based drug policies at the grassroots, national, and international levels since 2013. She is the Knowledge Translation Manager at the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation and is pursuing a PhD in Health Services Research at the University of Toronto.
Rebecca Haines-Saah
Strategic Advisor
Rebecca is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary and co-lead for the O’Brien Institute’s Population Health and Prevention Interest Group. Her research focuses on adolescent mental health and substance use through a social justice lens.
Michelle St. Pierre
Vice Chair
Michelle is a graduate of the University of British Columbia currently working towards her Master’s in Clinical Psychology where she seeks to identify differences in pain perception between cannabis users and non-users
Stephanie Lake
Secretary, UBC Chapter Chair
Stephanie is a PhD candidate in the School of Population and Public Health at UBC and a researcher at the BC Centre on Substance Use where she is studying the use of medical and non-medical cannabis among people with long-term drug use.
Dessy Pavlova
Strategic Advisor
Dessy is a professional writing and English graduate with a passion for research in cannabis and grassroots political advocacy. An aspiring project manager, she focuses research, outreach and freelance writing, editing and web development.
Donald MacPherson
Strategic Advisor
Donald is the Executive Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. He advocates policies based on principles of public health, human rights, social inclusion, and scientific evidence and moving away from a criminal justice paradigm where people with health problems are criminalized.