Our multidisciplinary
team
Here are the testimonies of our team members speaking to their attachment to CPIVAS and their motivation to work with all people concerned with the issue of sexual violence.
Monique
General Director
The last two years directing CPIVAS were filled with wonderful challenges, grand satisfactions, and lovely encounters. At the heart of all the action, a leitmotif: fighting against sexual violence and offering all victims and their relatives support, reassurance, and tools to regain power over their lives. I am also profoundly convinced that prevention constitutes a powerful way to educate the whole population regarding issues such as sexual violence. I have multiplied the efforts to consolidate our intervention and prevention team. We have increased the size of our organization from 7 to 11 employees during the first year in addition to our interns who help us tremendously! Developing an organization such as ours has been extremely satisfying! I am proud to manage a team of competent and dedicated professionals and am the bridge for a dynamic and competent board of administration.
Sophie
Administrative assistant
I joined CPIVAS in June 2019. I worked for 30 years in a municipal organization where my duties were completely different. When I came aware of the job opening at CPIVAS, I felt a calling to this organization because of its humane and sensitive approach to an issue that I hold dear to my heart. The administrative assistant position was new to me and presented wonderful challenges. I assume a role of support for the general director as well as for the team members. For me, customer service is essential and my role at reception is important. I like to attend to the well-being of our clientele and to our team members. The qualities of an administrative assistant consist of thoroughness, autonomy, organizational and listening skills. I welcome the clientele with a smile and kindness and try to be reassuring… I take these responsibilities seriously and it is my personal way to help people.
Marie-josée
Sexologist and psychotherapist
My name is Marie-Josée and I joined the team at CPIVAS 8 years ago. Given my university education, our society’s problem with sexual violence is a matter that has always been of professional interest to me. CPIVAS offers me the opportunity to work on it from different angles (intervention, prevention, awareness, etc.). Personally, psychotherapy is certainly the most rewarding part of my work. The possibility to be a witness to the inner strength of victims of sexual assault and to guide them towards greater resiliency is, in my eyes, an invaluable privilege.
Jade
High School Prevention Programs Coordinator
In the fall of 2020, I will have been working at CPIVAS for 1 year, but will have been part of the team for two years as I was an intern the previous year during my technical program in social work studies. As part of my role in the prevention team, I get to meet youth from Laval in grade 3 of high school. Actually, this is my favourite part of the job. Participating in debates, debunking well-anchored myths and biases, answering their multitude of questions, or having them confide in us reaffirms the need to address the issue of sexual violence and violence in intimate relationships with this clientele. These young people are the adults of tomorrow and nothing is more rewarding than seeing them join in and take a stand against sexual violence.
Émilie
Sexologist and sexual violence prevention program designer
I have been working in the prevention side of CPIVAS for 1 year. In order to prevent sexual violence, my mandate essentially consists of designing educational and playful activities aiming to transmit knowledge and develop favourable relational skills and attitudes in kids and teenagers as to favour a healthy psychosexual development. The multidisciplinary team at CPIVAS allows me to grow as a professional and concretely contribute to building a better world.
Emma
Elementary school Prevention Programs Coordinator
Once my bachelor in sexology was done, I wasn’t sure about my next step… And then, Clique sur toi! Appeared. This role of being the coordinator for the elementary school prevention program at CPIVAS is already one of the best job experiences I could have imagined. Fighting against sexual violences, at a young age, by focusing on socialization, based on respect, inclusion, mutual aid, kindness and most important equality of genders is one of the most important social to me. I’m so proud and happy to be a part of this amazing team, and enjoy all of its past, present and future projects.
CPIVAS is a very stimulating work environment. The welcome, the exchange of expertise, the discussions with different professionals all make the day richer and the daily tasks more enjoyable. I can already tell that this new role, this field, and this problematic, will make me grow tremendously as a sexologist, but also as a person. I will enjoy this journey as much as I can!
Julie
Sexologist and Psychotherapist
I have worked at CPIVAS since May 2006. I completed my two university internships at this organization, and have…very simply…fallen in love with it! Often, people ask me: “How have you been able to work in the domain of sexual violence…for so long…?!” Indeed, people have often asked me this question and I have always had the same answer. I love working at CPIVAS because it gives me the opportunity to be a privileged witness to the moment, almost sacred moment, where a person decides to take back power over their life. Despite the numerous, often incapacitating, consequences associated with sexual violence, I have met people who have made the commitment to themselves…to get better. For me, being the supportive person in this process is extremely important and rewarding. This work nourishes me greatly and allows for a connection at a profound level, which is essential!
Magalie
Sexologist and Psychotherapist
I have been working at CPIVAS for 18 years. Animated by the values of justice, equality, and solidarity, I support people who are victims of sexual violence every day with compassion, so they can take back power over their lives, improve their quality of life and reach a general state of well-being. I also intervene with relatives, so they become resiliency tutors and help victims bounce back and rebuild themselves after having suffered a sexual assault. In addition to making change happen at an individual level, my commitment to CPIVAS is also motivated by the need to engage in the transformation of social norms that maintain sexual violence. In this vein, I work on dismantling rape culture by spreading knowledge on the attitudes and biases that minimize and normalize sexual violence by promoting equality between sexes and by cultivating a culture of consent.
Laurie
Support Counselor
I am more than glad to be joining the amazing team of CPIVAS as a support counselor. I have been working with vulnerable populations for many years now, and I have a great passion for psychosocial counselling in all its forms, as well as the creation of psychoeducational programs. It is a real privilege to accompany people through their healing process and to witness them reclaim power over their lives. I’ve always identified to the feminist approach of intervention, as I am a bit of an activist in my heart, thus why it’s such a pleasure for me to be now able to participate in the fight for equality, respect and social justice among a devoted team.
Steffi
Sexologist and Psychotherapist
My love story with CPIVAS started back in 2019, when I joined the team as an intern in a master in clinical sexology. I immediately felt like I belonged in this stimulating, socially engaged and humane field. From the start of my university journey, I had the goal of practicing psychotherapy with victims of sexual violence, and that is why CPIVAS was such an amazing learning experience for me. I was overwhelmed with happiness when I was offered a job as a psychotherapist at the end of my internship, and that is how I finally joined the team at the end of August 2021. The process of reclaiming back your power and acceptance are at the heart of my intervention approach, and I am grateful to be able to accompany people in that way.
Élodie
Intern and student in social work at Université de Montréal
I consider myself lucky to have joined the team at CPIVAS to conduct my final internship. I have had an immediate calling to this organization because of its mission, but also for its values that I share professionally and personally. I have justice and social change at heart and believe that all together, we have the power to make changes happen, break myths and biases, and build a more just and equal society. I feel privileged to be able to participate in the multiple activities and services offered by the organization such as the appeasement workshops, the mobilization committee, the prevention workshops, the intervention with relatives of sexual violence survivors and even more!
Harrissa
Communications & marketing Advisor.
Looking back on certain moments of our lives, we realize that some moments were turning points on our path to becoming the person we are today. I know who I want to become. The person I envision myself to be is an activist, a passionate of social problematics, a militant who fights for injustice. I wish to become the type of person I admire and work for what counts the most, human values. Working at CPIVAS is one of those turning points which I believe gets me closer to the person I am meant to become. A person that spends their life fighting for things they believe in. Caring about this cause isn’t a decision, as a woman, it unfortunately becomes second nature, it is instinct, it is vital, it is necessary. As an individual who desires to see change, I realized something…
If you do not like the world you live in, be part of the change, and that is exactly why I am here.
Aurélie
Intern and student in bachelor of sexology
It is with great pleasure that I join the CPIVAS team for the upcoming year. In addition to sharing the values and vision of the organization, the mission particularly touches me. Indeed, I have a strong belief that every victim of sexual assault has the potential to regain power over their life. The resilience shown by victims, as well as their loved ones, truly inspires me. I can’t wait to get involved in the spheres of intervention and prevention through the many services in place. I am grateful for the opportunity that CPIVAS gives me to grow as a future professional in sexology and participate in meaningful social change.
Members of the Board of Administration
Engaged and dedicated to fight against sexual violence
Mélissa Montour
President
Strategic and principal political Advisor at Alliance de développement de stratégies Alpha (ADSA)
Frédérick Lapointe
Vice-president
Social service agent & sexologist at the “Centre de prévention et d’intervention au Cégep Montmorency”
Dorcas Destinoble
Secretary
Executive Director of “Femmes en emploi”
Mélanie Brisebois
Administrator
Founder & owner of “L’Élixir de Jouvence”
Desneiges Simard
Administrator
Lawyer
Emma Berrigan-Ramirez
Employee representative
Coordinator of the prevention programm (elementary school), CPIVAS
Claudia Ossio
Administrator
Criminal and penal prosecuting attorney in Laval.
Contact Information
Phone: 450-669-9053
Fax: (450) 669-1658
Email:
administration@cpivas.com
Mon - Fri from 8am to 5pm
+1 888-933-9007
EMERGENCY LINE 24H/7d
Postal Address
Post office box 27543
Pont Viau franchise
Laval, Québec, H7G 4Y2