Dr. Carol Wiebe
Executive Director

As a family physician, chamber musician, and former hospital executive, Dr Carol Wiebe uses her broad training and experience as well as ingrained collaborative skills to design opportunities and spaces where people can find meaning and heal. Carol studied music performance (piano, flute) before becoming a family physician. Her medical career shifted from HIV primary care to elder care in hospital and long-term care, where she led clinical and informatics programs, followed by several years as VP, Medical Affairs at Bruyère.

Dr. Wiebe co-founded the Bruyère Artist in Residence program and ConcertDocs, with both programs bringing the arts and a great deal of joy into residential care.

She completed an MBA at Rotman School of Management in 2021, using the GEMBA-HLS (Global Executive MBA in Healthcare and the Life Sciences) as a springboard to launch Radical Connections.

Sri Alageswaran
Business Manager

Sri is an experienced finance professional with over 15 years of experience in finance operations. She is a professional accountant holding an H.B. Com degree in business administration and MBA degree specializing in strategic business management.

Sri is interested in supporting Radical Connections’ vision and strategic business priorities. She is passionate about charitable services and enjoys supporting organizations with a mission to make a difference within the community through unique service delivery. She is a service-minded individual and finds meaning in her work through a solid contribution to organizations with a greater purpose of connecting with people in care.

Sri is truly passionate about Radical Connections’ creative and innovative approach to bridge artistic talents with healthcare.

Anne Coulombe

Anne Coulombe is a retired school administrator, educational mentor, and agent of change.  While working on her master’s degree at SFU, Anne acted as a sessional instructor and initiated a free Partners in Education Program for parents of learning-disabled children. This led to pioneering the inclusion of students with exceptional needs into regular school classrooms. 

During her post master’s studies at UBC, Anne collaborated with Shelley Hymel, a psychology professor, to run a summer camp at Bowen Island. She also collaborated with two literacy professors, Florence Pieronek and  Ann Lukasevich, on a school-based literacy project. This culminated in the publication of Favorites, Friendships, Food, and Fantasy: Literature-Based Thematic Units for Primary. 

After surviving a serious motor vehicle accident, Anne continues to live independently in North Vancouver. She provides mentorship to those doing further studies and engages people to explore non-violent ways of creating a more peaceful, loving, respectful and just world.

Anne’s present interest is in making meaningful and joyful virtual connections with people with dementia through interactive literary arts and singing.

Maren Kathleen Elliott
Curatorial Collaboration

Maren is a social-practice artist, curator, and community activator with a background in education; a BA with distinction (Psychology, Music) from the University of Alberta. Her expressive modalities include movement, visual arts, storytelling, and music, and she’s completed residencies at the University of Alberta’s Arts-based Research Studio and the Ottawa School of Art.

Maren has spearheaded community-based arts activations across Canada and Online. A strong believer in arts as a catalyst for change, she engages communities on numerous levels: as a participant, creator, ethnographer, and curious student of life.

With Radical Connections, Maren addresses medicalized spaces as vessels for quality art, active imagination, and the agency of site users; exploring patient-centered collaborative approaches to curation at Bruyère’s St.-Vincent Hospital.
Watch her talk on Ria-Links-Artists-for-Systems-Change Salon#12

Eva Petersen Ndiaye
Curatorial Assistant

Eva has a large interest in both visual art and social support, and the potential spaces where those two subjects intersect.
Before she graduated from Canterbury High School’s Specialized Arts Program, Eva had already worked as a volunteer, with the Artist in Residence program, at Bruyère’s St.Vincent Hospital; where she helped create drawing tools for elders with mobility issues.

Eva is in the Bachelor of Social Work program at uOttawa.

Gaining insight about visual arts and social support in her secondary and ongoing postsecondary education has strengthened her recognition of the arts as a beneficial resource; and their use as an aid to social support, in many diverse environments.

Eva plans to obtain her Master's in Social Work to become a hospital social worker and aspires to find ways to incorporate visual arts into social services.

Lucy Li
Research Mentor

Lucy is an interdisciplinary human who worked on the “Impact of an Artist-in-Residence program in a complex continuing care hospital: a quality improvement investigation”. She has come back to offer mentorship on Radical Connections’ next research project through her past experience.

Lucy has had training in the arts throughout her childhood and adolescence. She is active, outside, and is currently leash training her kitten to follow suit. She just finished her fourth year of Kinesiology at Queen’s University, where she specialized in athletic therapy and completed her certificate in Disability and Physical Activity. Through her schooling, Lucy has had many opportunities to mentor and develop her mentorship skills in a variety of areas. Her career goal is to become a physiotherapist and she is constantly achieving her life goal which is to be content.