Kirsten Mercer wins Spirit of Schlifer Award
Goldblatt Partners is pleased to announce that Kirsten Mercer will be one of the recipients of the 2024 Spirit of Schlifer Award.
This award, presented by the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic, recognizes “a woman or gender-diverse person whose career demonstrates their commitment to disrupting gender-based violence and whose work is advancing equality, social justice and human rights for all women and gender-diverse folx.”
Kirsten has devoted much of her professional life and personal time to advancing women’s equality and human rights.
The Clinic explains why it chose Kirsten to receive this award:
As one of the policy architects of the 2015 Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan, Kirsten worked closely with advocates, government officials, elected leaders to launch an historic set of legislative changes, policy developments, an award-winning media campaign and a broad-reaching $41 million dollar investment in the GBV sector. At both the provincial and federal levels, Kirsten played a leadership role in governmental response to the injustice of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
More recently, Kirsten has represented individuals and organizations in the GBV sector before all levels of court in Ontario. In 2022, Kirsten was counsel to Ending Violence Against Women (EVA) Renfrew County at the Coroner’s Inquest in to the femicides of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam. Kirsten has also been actively engaged in providing leadership and strategic advice to the campaign for implementation of the CKW Inquest recommendations.
In addition to her advocacy for change in legislative and policy landscape to eradicate gender-based violence, Kirsten also has an active legal practice representing clients with human rights, civil claims, employment matters and other workplace complaints at a leading union-side labour law firm. Since representing Luke’s Place and the Barbra Schlifer Clinic as co-intervenors at the Ontario Court of Appeal in defence of the recognition of a new tort of family violence in Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, Kirsten has advised clients involved in family law proceedings about how they might use the Ahluwalia decision to advance civil claims.
The award will be presented at a ceremony on April 24th. You can read more about the award and the Clinic here.
Congratulations, Kirsten!