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Background on Diane Walsh

EDUCATION
Diane was born in Montreal in 1971. Growing up in Westmount, she spent many-a-child play day on 'Murray Hill' an all-time favourite spot, with friends, and one of Montreal's classic parks known formally as King George Park. Famous maple trees that were so loved there, were struck down by the terrible ice-storms including 'the big apple tree', aptly named by the local children, and 'under which' Diane grew into those impressionable developmental years. As it happened, the city of Westmount removed all remnants of the trees. Back then replanting was but a scarce obligation. But the loss of these famous trees deeply affected Diane and her later interest in local government, citizenship and environmentalism.
Diane went on to graduate in 1990 from the liberal arts programme at Marianopolis College, a high-ranking private C.E.G.E.P in Quebec. Then, at the young age of eighteen, she decided to leave her hometown. She moves to the West Coast and earns her bachelor of arts in political science, three years later, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver - graduating in 1993. Then, it's a quick jaunt over to gorgeous Vancouver island. At the University of Victoria she specialized in Studies in policy and practice and earned her master of arts degree from the interdisciplinary programme.

EARLY WRITING
As in Vancouver, Diane was keen to stay involved with the Environment Collective, OXFAM; as a volunteer, VIDEA in Victoria and the CRD Race Relations Association and Students for Choice. She wrote a thesis during this period, 'The Silencing of Abortion Experiences: An institutional Ethnography' (1998). It was adapted as a resource text by community agencies and individual health educators in British Columbia and Washington state. She also contributed to campus-based publications including The Emily and, later, Third Space and had a hand in improving the status of students pursuing ethnographic women's scholarship at the graduate research level. Write here to learn about this period and the work of the Chilly Climate Committee, if you're interested.

FUND RAISING
While Diane attended school (and for a time after graduating) she worked on contract as a campaign manager for health organizations including The Kidney Foundation, the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Canadian Institute for the Blind, the Parks and Recreation Foundation, providing fund-raising expertise.

VOLUNTEER WORK
In the field, Diane has shown extraordinary leadership helping to mobilize community consensus on a number of social issues in Canada. Her interest in social entrepreneur-ship (and academic research on social & community governance models for harm reduction) channelled Diane into doing key-issue coalition work in and around the city of Victoria.
She served as a Volunteer for the Victoria Police Department for (what was then) the James Bay Community Policing Office (now since amalgamated with Greater Victoria force). She wrote the building desecration (i.e. non-artistic graffiti) community-policing policy letter which highlighted crime hot zones and, also, assisted in the office, fielding calls and providing report writing.
In addition, her association with community women's centres added perspective to the community-office Constable [in-charge at that time who was instrumental in the move toward modestly changing some of the attitudes in domestic-violence-call police community response]. Incrementally, new policy measures came into being. Diane played a small part in that initiative: officers were helped to be better equipped to assist victims of family-based violence, when working, in the field. Community mental health teams and court personnel also became better equipped due to an overall added-professional-training effort.

PROFESSIONAL WORK
Diane went on to work with at-risk adults and youth in the criminal justice system and wrote extensively on streets issues,. Of particular note, she drafted the (year) 1995 offender's re-entry into the workforce proposal for the John Howard Society of Victoria - at the time, receiving high praise and endorsement from organization executives and AG staff. Subsequently, she served as a consulting protocol writer and program facilitator for BC Community Living Services (Central Island) Ministry of Children and Families and (Victoria) district areas, covering adult mental health sector services.
She has been responsible for managing case-files over many years, and where she's acted in a contractual monitoring capacity she's been very effective as a policy implementer and program developer in government service . Her roles have included conveying serious incident reports and networking information to constables, court-officers, core care teams, and/or staff-in-crisis - where it was found a sensitive character was required.
Diane was given and therefore assumed executive responsibility over skilled conflict intervention and difficult mediation cases. To further enhance her skills, she acquired an associate instructor certification, in 2000, from the Crisis Prevention Institute Minnesota, USA, in non-violent crisis intervention - qualifying her on Vancouver Island as a policy staff trainer for BC community housing and proprietary care facilities.
She was effective in not only writing in-house regulations but seeing to the implementation of the written risk-response strategies and safety directives intended for those staff serving mental health clients (in care of the Ministry). Some of the larger reports Diane developed over this period are still being used today by licensed agencies on Vancouver island.

INTEREST IN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM EMERGES
Diane's skill-set, background, and professional experiences through the 1990's and early 2000 years propelled her into journalism, where she found herself, and in a most unique position to make her research & writing an even greater source for good.
Having opened a research company in 1995 she then developed it - outreaching into more investigative-style-research service provision.
Her focus: conscientious issue-based reporting: MediaGeode becomes an independent media enterprise in 2005.
In 2007 Diane acquired an ICS-Canada Private Investigation Diploma, which is part of a US jointly accredited program of the Penn Foster Institute (Scranton, PA).
More recently, she's published her Book on Kindle, in April 2009; also available on Google Books.

GENERAL FOCAL POINTS
Today, Diane is an independent watchdog with an interest in covering social entrepreneurial-ship, eco-governance ethics, public health care reform initiatives and restorative justice stories. She is especially interested in the broad field of the wrongfully convicted.
As an investigative journalist, she epitomizes an ideal example of success for talent in community-focused journalism.
She writes for numerous newspapers and magazines in Canada, the US, and Europe.
Read her publications to date at http://indydianewalsh.wordpress.com/all-publications-2 and visit her company website here.

Diane Walsh also holds a Canadian Coast Guard Certified Small Craft License in sailing & power boating (Oak Bay Squadron, British Columbia, 2004) and enjoys going boating around the islands in her spare time.