Meet the staff who make it all work
We have a remarkable team of dedicated staff who share in the vision and commitment of the Neufeld Institute. Our staff are all knowledgeable about the content of the approach as well as the workings of the organization.
The staff are listed in the approximate order of your likelihood of encountering them.
Karen Guise
Karen is our receptionist and registrar extraordinaire. If you contact us, it will be she who directs your inquiry to the person on our team that she considers most suitable to respond. She is responsible for the managing the content of our public website as well as for much of the communication that take place. We rely on her to keep tabs on what is happening and to create some semblance of order in our world. Karen is a mother and grandmother.
Tamara Strijack, MA
Tamara has been the individual most responsible for masterminding the development of our courses out of the raw material her father has provided over the years. She is our dean of education and well-suited for the task as an academic instructor and therapist. We depend upon her to keep her father focused on the tasks at hand and to provide the needed leadership for the organization. She also directs our practitioner training program with its focus on parent consulting. Tamara is a mother of two adult children.
Michele Maurer
As a faculty member and experienced practitioner and trainer, Michele is well suited to lead our course support team, together with the in-house training that equips them for their tasks. Michele is also in charge of our practitioner subscription and support program as well as hosting the master classes offered to our masterclass subscribers. She also serves on the admin team that meets regularly to solve problems and give direction to the Institute. Michele is a mother of two adult children.
Joanna Bylinka
As a faculty member with classical psychological training in Europe and her own publishing house in Poland, Joanna is well-suited both professionally and academically to carry the research portfolio for the Neufeld Institute. She not only collects published articles that support Neufeld's articulation of the attachment-based developmental approach but also helps guide graduate students and researchers who have made this approach the focus of their thesis or studies. She is in charge of a separate website dedicated to this task. Joanna is a mother of two children.
Robin Brooks-Sherriff
As a faculty member still practicing professionally as a nurse, Robin devotes her spare time to help curate and match-make the many speaking inquiries we receive at the Institute. She also manages Gordon's speaking events. Robin provides leadership for our masterclass subscription program and is responsible for much of the content on our public website, including OUR TEAM pages. She also serves on the admin team that meets regularly to solve problems and give direction to the Institute. Robin is a mother and grandmother.
Jesper Conrad
Jesper brings a fun-loving Danish spirit and market sensibility to our team and is the only one remotely equipped to help our potential students find us. Jesper recognized our deficiencies at the sales end of things and offered to lend us a hand. He also masterminded our migration to a new platform after years of plodding along with a tech infrastructure that was aging and no longer suiting our needs. Jesper has chosen a nomadic life in Europe as he works with his wife to educate their four children on the road.
Celena Krahn
Celena serves a dual role as faculty and staff. She has a technical flair that has been extremely useful in helping construct a delivery system for the courses that we offer. She also serves as our queen of media, including the housing and delivery of our recordings and the management of our social media. Celena has a penchant for editing and puts these abilities to good use with our newsletter. Celena is a mother of a teenage son.
Bria Shantz, MA
Bria – another daughter in the Neufeld Family - brings to us her flair for crunching numbers, especially when we are faced with the challenge of creating working solutions for delivering our courses to interested groups and organizations. She also helps make sure that our course support team is properly compensated. Bria is a trained course facilitator herself but is fully occupied as a professional teacher and as the mother of two boys.
Paola Marroquin
Paola has recently taken charge (2025) of our financial records and reports as well as assists our registrar with registration from time to time. She is undoubtedly over-qualified for the bookkeeping job with her masters of business administration, but looks at this opportunity as a step towards bringing to fruition her dream of creating a NGO for Child Well-Being to her native Peru.
Ceara Caton
Ceara is invaluable as Celena's assistant as Celena holds a number of challenging staff portfolios. As such, most of Ceara's work is done one step removed from the pubic interface. Celena and Ceara not only share a mutual friendship but also a love of nature, horses and other animals. Ceara is an active rancher coming from a multi-generational history of ranching. Ceara is the designated 'answer' to a number of very attached mammals.
Genevieve Schreier, MA
Genevieve has long been embedded in the Neufeld Family. With a Masters in International Relations from Brussels, with her personal and academic rootedness in the Neufeld Approach, and with her gifted understanding of organizational dynamics, she functioned for years as Gordon's primary assistant. She now serves the organization in an active faculty role as well as invaluable consulting role for the leadership and staff.
Joy Neufeld B.Ed
Joy manages Gordon and supports our admin team.
Joy is a retired school teacher and in many ways the heart of the Neufeld Institute. She is the one responsible for taking care of Gordon. She also takes care of the staff and oversees the myriad of inquiries coming in from our website.
Inquiries
If you have questions or require additional information that you cannot find on our website or FAQ page, you may contact our office on our Inquiries page.
Charity & Non-Profit Status
The Neufeld Institute is a registered Canadian charitable organization under the name Neufeld Institute Foundation and is also registered as a NPO in British Columbia. If you would like to make a contribution to us, please go to our donation page.
Stay Connected with the Neufeld Institute
Sign up for our newsletter to receive insights, editorials, and updates on new courses, webinars, and scheduled classes—all rooted in the Neufeld approach. Whether you're a parent, educator, or professional, our resources are here to help you make sense of the children in your care.
You can also follow us on...
Vancouver, BC V6M 1L3
Canada