AFCC Alberta Chapter Board of Directors
Judith Lake,
AFCC Alberta Chater President
Judith Lake is a Chartered Mediator with over 20 years experience mediating in the areas of workplace, separation and divorce, civil claims and restorative justice. Judith teaches ADR for the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Business and she co-authored and instructs ADRIA’s Separation & Divorce Mediation program. She was a family mediator with Alberta Justice Resolution Services for nine years before returning to private practice and now mediates for their Family Mediation and Civil Claims programs.
Traci L. Bannister,
AFCC Alberta Chapter
Vice-President
Traci Bannister practiced as a Family Law Lawyer and Mediator in South Africa for 20 years before moving with her family to Calgary, Alberta in 2012. She has requalified as a Barrister/Solicitor in Alberta and was called to the bar in June 2015.
Traci is also a trained mediator and has extensive experience with alternate dispute resolution processes in family matters.
Jonathan Tieman,
Treasurer
Jonathan Tieman is a lawyer, mediator and collaborative lawyer who practices law in Brooks and Medicine Hat, Alberta. Jonathan has appeared at all levels of court in Alberta, and has expansive experience in resolving disputes (through alternative dispute resolution and the courts). Jonathan is a part-time instructor at Medicine Hat College (since 2008) teaching business law.
Dr. Susan Clark,
Secretary
Dr. Susan Clark is a Registered Psychologist and co-founder of the Calgary-based private practice: Taylor Clark Psychological Services. Dr. Clark has extensive clinical and forensic experience, in Canada and the USA, specializing in divorce and separation. She is a member in good standing of the College of Alberta Psychologists. In addition to her private practice, Dr. Clark often volunteers her time as an Expert Witness for the University of Calgary Trial Advocacy Program.
Dr. Clark has lectured at the University level and presented at nationally and internationally renowned conferences. Her involvement within the psycho-legal arena has led her to specialize in high conflict Child Custody Evaluations, Parent Consultant, Views of the Child Interventions, Parenting Coordination-Arbitration, Reunification Therapy, and Litigation Support. Most recently, she contributed to the latest provisions of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Practice Note 7 and 8.
The Honourable Madam Justice Sherry L. Kachur, Board Member
Madam Justice Kachur was appointed a Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta on June 2, 2020. Justice Kachur holds a Bachelor of Arts (Criminology) degree and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta. She first articled, and was called to the Bar, in British Columbia, and subsequently continued her practice in Alberta.
For most of her career, Madam Justice Kachur has practised primarily in the area of family law, most recently as a partner and co-founder of WK Family Lawyers LLP. She sat as the decision maker in numerous arbitral proceedings. She is a past president of the Calgary Bar Association and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 2012. Justice Kachur has been an instructor at the Alberta Bar Admission course and numerous Legal Education Society of Alberta events.
Dr. Terry Singh, Registered
Psychologist and PhD.,
Board Member
Dr. Terry Singh is a Registered Psychologist. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with post-graduate specialization in Child and Family Forensics, and has had more than a decade of clinical experience in Canada and the USA. He has served as a Professor at the university level, is an internationally-recognized researcher, and has been the recipient of several national and provincial awards over the course of his career. At this time, Dr. Singh’s primary work involves assisting Court-involved individuals, couples, and families of divorce and separation during and after the transition via evaluation (Practice Note 7 and Practice Note 8), treatment, mediation, parenting coordination, and arbitration. He has been qualified as an expert witness and provided testimony in both the Provincial Court and the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta. His areas of special interest include child custody evaluation, consideration of cultural factors in assessment and treatment, and the treatment of severe and persistent psychopathology.
Rhyannon L. O’Heron,
Board Member
Rhyannon O’Heron is a partner at Bruyer & Mackay LLP. in Edmonton Alberta. Rhyannon specializes in family law and fertility law. She is a Registered Collaborative Family Lawyer, Mediator, and has extensive family law litigation experience. Rhyannon obtained her master’s in social work (MSW) prior to pursuing her law degree. She worked as a Clinical Social Worker for a number of years providing psychotherapy, family mediation, and crisis intervention services to children, and families.
Rhyannon obtained her law degree from the University of Alberta and was called to the bar in 2014. Rhyannon is a volunteer with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre and has instructed for the Legal Education Society of Alberta. She is a board member of the Association of Collaborative Family Professionals (Edmonton) and is also a member of the Law Society of Alberta and the Canadian Bar Association.
Sonja Lusignan,
Board Member
Sonja was called to the Alberta bar in July 2005. She has practiced family law exclusively since approximately 2006.
Sonja has extensive training in mediation, interest-based negotiation, litigation, and collaborative law. She is extensively involved in continuing legal education to stay current in the area of family law and child welfare law.
Sonja has conducted many trials in Provincial Family Court, in the Court of Queen’s Bench, many arbitration hearings, and assisted at numerous Binding Judicial Dispute Resolution meetings. She has appeared at the Alberta Court of Appeal on a number of occasions.
Evelyn Wotherspoon, Registered Clinicl Social Worker, Board Member
Ms. Wotherspoon is a registered clinical social worker and a member of the Zero To Three Fellowship Academy who has been serving high risk children and families in Alberta since 1980. For the last decade she has been providing child mental health assessments and consultations to families throughout Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon in her private practice. She is well-known to the Calgary judiciary as an expert witness in child mental health and child development. Evelyn has authored papers on the needs of vulnerable infants and toddlers for a variety of publications and has given presentations on socially vulnerable infants and toddlers to audiences throughout the US and Canada.
She has 35 years of experience working with high risk children and families in mental health, child development and child protection settings. Evelyn is the recipient of the Frameworks Institute Lochner Award for knowledge dissemination, and the Alberta Health People First Award for collaborative service excellence. She is active with the Alberta College of Social Workers as a complaints investigator and as a member of the Discipline Committee. She is a clinical supervisor currently mentoring two clinical social workers in their provisional year of practice.
Tracy Brown,
Board Member
Tracy joined the Board in 2019 and has been instrumental in establishing the AFCC Alberta ad hoc Committee on Parenting Coordination tasked with coordinating a Provincial Working Group with the overarching goal of advancing the practice of Parenting Coordination (PC) in Alberta. Tracy is a passionate advocate for reasonable “do no harm” resolutions to Family disputes. She is a trained Mediator, Parenting Coordinator, and a registered Collaborative Lawyer with considerable experience working with high-conflict families. She represents both children and parents in and out of Court. As the founder and managing lawyer for Brown Law Group, a Family Law firm in Edmonton, Tracy mentors young lawyers and students.
In addition to her contributions to the AFCC Board, Tracy is on the Executive of the CBA Family Law Section (North) and the CBA Small Solo & General Practice Section (North), she is a member of the Women’s Legal Forum of the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association and the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Family Law Consulting Committee, and she volunteers with the Edmonton Community Legal Centre. Tracy obtained a B.A.Hons (1994) from the University of Toronto in International Development Studies and spent some 20 years before Law working on international human rights and post-war development in the Americas and Africa. She obtained a Juris Doctor Law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School (2009), and was called to the Ontario and Alberta Bar in 2010.
Dr. Beth Archer-Kuhn,
Board Member
Beth brings with her twenty-five years of practice experience, starting in child welfare. Beth was employed in children’s mental health for over 20 years as a clinical social worker, clinical director of services, and executive director. For 15 years, Beth completed child custody and access evaluations for the family court in Ontario. Beth’s research experience and interests include the overlap of child custody decision-making and domestic violence, specifically in relation to shared parenting. The implications of this work invite partnerships in the fields of social work, child welfare, children’s mental health, domestic violence shelters and law. As a Teaching Scholar and Professor at the University of Calgary, Beth’s second area of research is social work education with a specific interest in inquiry-based learning, on campus, on-line and study abroad. She teaches across programs, clinical, ICD, leadership, and across levels of programs, BSW, MSW, and PhD.
Brandi Smith,
Board Member
Brandi Smith has been working as a Registered Psychologist in Alberta for 11 years and working with children and youth since 2001. She has a Masters degree in Counselling Psychology. Brandi began working with children and youth as a crisis intervention worker, youth worker, and family support worker in the Child and Family Services system while she completed her clinical education and registration process. Once registered, Brandi continued to make child and youth her primary clinical focus and worked both in the Child and Family Services system and the health care system. Brandi has been in private practice at Creating Solutions for the last 13 years and works with diverse clients, including children, youth, adults, and families both in evaluation and therapy. When working with families experiencing separation and divorce, Brandi’s primary focus continues to be healthy children and healthy family systems regardless of the current level of conflict. As a result, Brandi works with families at various levels of legal involvement, from those completing a “kitchen table” agreement to those within a litigation process. Outside of separation and divorce clients, Brandi also specializes in clients experiencing the impacts of motor vehicle accidents, educational assessments, and various mental health diagnoses.
Dr. Lorri Yasenik,
Past President
Dr. Lorri Yasenik is the co-director/co-owner of Rocky Mountain Play Therapy Institute, an international training institute for the study and treatment of children. She is the recent past co-owner of Rocky Mountain Psychological services where she was Clinical Director for over 10 years. Lorri has dedicated her professional life to working with children, families and individuals. She has over 25 years experience in the clinical field of practice. She is a Registered Clinical Social Work Supervisor, Certified and Registered Child Psychotherapy and Play Therapy Supervisor, Registered Family Mediator, and a Registered Parenting Coordinator-Arbitrator.
Glenda Lux, M.A.,
R. Psych.
Board Member
Glenda Lux, M.A., R. Psych.
has been in clinical practice since 2001 working with parents, children and families. She is a Registered Psychologist with an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Calgary and a graduate degree in Counselling Psychology from Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
Ms. Lux has specialized training and experience in working with couples and their families as they go through divorce and post-divorce. Ms. Lux provides divorce-related forensic services such as parent mediation, parent coordination, co-parenting counselling, reunification therapy, psychological testing, parenting-time/parenting responsibility assessments (previously known as bilateral custody and access assessments), parental fitness evaluations and litigation support. She has published in the area of coercive control and its relevance to best interest determinations in Canadian family law.
photo credit
Stacy Deering
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Connect
AFCC Alberta Chapter
c/o Mr. Jonathan Tieman, Treasurer,
Maclean Wiedemann Lawyers LLP
422 6th Street S.E.
Medicine Hat, Alberta T1A 1H5
587-805-3582