Northern Policy Institute (NPI) has appointed Thunder Bay's Paula Haapanen as its first vice-president.
The Northern Ontario think tank made the announcement in a Sept. 26 news release.
“This is a great hire for the institute,” Charles Cirtwill, the institute's president and CEO, said in the release.
“Paula brings a wealth of experience from the francophone community and the social economy and social innovation sectors. She has been a friend and partner of NPI since our early days and understands our role as an advocate for evidence-based decisions about how best to grow Northern Ontario.”
Haapanen most recently served as the senior director of engagement with Impact ON, a non-profit social enterprise that supports the promotion, development, management and innovation of mission- and impact-driven businesses, particularly social enterprises and cooperatives.
There, Haapanen was responsible for communications, government relations and partnership development, responsibilities that will now fall under her purview at the institute, the release said.
Haapanen is fluently trilingual — speaking French, English and Finnish — and previously worked as the community economic development officer for northwestern Ontario with the Réseau de soutien en immigration francophone du Nord de l’Ontario.
In that role, she was involved in various immigration initiatives in the northwest, including the Matchmaker project, the Connector project, Francophone settlement services in Northwestern Ontario, and the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot.
“This experience will be central to her new duties at NPI,” the release said.
“Paula will also be leading our ongoing work in building and strengthening Welcoming Communities in every region of Northern Ontario,” Cirtwill said.
“She is ideally suited for that task since, in addition to her experience working within the immigration sector, she herself has lived experience as a newcomer having lived and worked abroad in Finland and in France for over 17 years.”
Launched in 2012, the Northern Policy Institute is an independent think tank performing research, analyzing data, and disseminating ideas about life in Northern Ontario. Areas of priority for the organization include Indigenous peoples, demographics, environment, communities, economy and infrastructure.
The organization will host Magnetic North, a two-day conference focused on growth, in Sudbury in December.