Recent Stories
In the News
Message from the Board
Release Date April 27, 2026
New leadership at the Students Commission of Canada (SCC)
On behalf of the SCC’s Board of Directors, we are extremely proud of the distributed leadership and succession planning model of the Students Commission of Canada. It is our view that no one does it better than SCC, with a strong and sustained investment in our people and their professional development.
Our Board has received a notice of resignation from Sharif Mahdy, Chief Executive Officer. Sharif has led the expansion and formalization of distributed leadership across the organization and intentionally prepared us well for this news. All members of the Board, SCC volunteers and staff are hugely grateful for his leadership and contributions to the organization’s success and wish him well as he pursues the next chapter of his career. Sharif will assist with the final steps of succession until his last formal day with SCC on June 12, 2026.
Anticipating innovations and aspirations that sustain the health and advance the mission of the SCC, it is also with great joy the Board announces that Florence Bergeron and Christa Romaldi will step forward into co-leadership of the SCC in its next 10-year strategy. Florence has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Christa appointed Chief Development Officer (CDO). SCC has a long history of strong succession planning and SCC’s Board is fully supportive of this co-leadership team and, indeed, all SCC leaders and staff.
Florence has shared with the Board some key priorities for her leadership: “As SCC’s first francophone CEO, I have experienced that language for many communities, cultures and nations across Canada can become a strategic vision for inclusion, power-sharing, and youth voice. In a country where language is deeply tied to identity, history, places of origin and access, language leadership offers a unique opportunity for social, civic and economic success.
“From my experience convening thousands of youth together to experience the Canada I have heard they want, and heading up research from hundreds of youth programs, one of my objectives will be to respond to the calls of youth regarding language and culture, their desire to be strongly rooted in specific communities yet global in their vision, competencies and daily lives. I will continue to champion and role model, SCC’s leadership in responding to their call.”
Florence has led teams and major projects in all areas of SCC’s operations, ranging from policy, strategy, revenue generation and research consultation for all levels of government across Canada, leading SCC’s research and knowledge mobilization team, its platform development, and executing major events such as Take Our Kids to Work, the Canada We Want Conference series, and securing major opportunities to foster youth engagement with the likes of the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Joint Consortium on School Health, and most recently the Aga Khan Foundation Canada.
Christa brings to the co-leadership team a 25-year history in cross-sector youth work, with three prongs: knowledge of grassroots groups, a focus on community and people development, and generation of program development proposals that fund SCC’s activities with youth. Christa's priorities lie within her development lens: “My extensive experience in both very downstream and upstream youth work has really shaped how I think about collaboration, how I understand youth programming, and how I frame problems into solutions that have sector-wide benefits. We, at SCC, look forward to expanding our strategic role in building and scaling local collaborations that collectively address on a national front the issues youth tell us they face in today’s turbulent world.”
As Chair of the Board, we unanimously endorse our new leadership team as well as thank Sharif for his amazing tenure, the growth and sustainability he developed at SCC over the past 8 plus years in the top leadership role. This remarkable growth in reach and impact is a true testament to the tremendous talent, passion, and dedication of all SCC staff. Through unwavering commitment to SCC’s mission, SCC’s team has achieved increasingly stronger outcomes for young people and youth engagement and contributed to SCC’s solid reputation for outstanding leadership in the youth serving sector.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Brina Ludwig Prout, Chair
The Students Commission of Canada
