In this episode, Haley Flaro, Executive Director of Ability New Brunswick shares with us how they have become Canadian leaders within the disability sector and the value of forging strong partnerships with government.



We’ve been able to extend our collective impact in reaching people with a disability. The first year of the agreement, back then I think we collectively serve 20,000 people with a disability in New Brunswick and now we’re up over 73,000. And you know, it’s been really powerful.Haley Flaro, Ablity new brunswick







Transcript of Interview with Haley Flaro



Jenelle:Welcome Haley. Thanks for being with us here today.



Haley Flaro:Thank you,



Jenelle:Today we’re here with Haley Flaro, Executive Director of Ability New Brunswick, and you can learn more about Ability New Brunswick at abilityNB.ca. I’ve been tracking Haley’s career and the impact of the organization over the past 10 years. Ability New Brunswick has really emerged not only in New Brunswick as a leader within the disability sector and the nonprofit sector, but also as a national leader within your own industry. Can you tell us a little bit about your organization, its mission, and in particular a little bit more about your role?



Haley Flaro:Excellent. That’s a very kind introduction. So Ability New Brunswick. We’ve been around for over 62 years now in New Brunswick, working with people with a mobility disability. So that includes individuals and families that are impacted of course, but individuals with spinal cord injury, amputation, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, stroke I think there are over 200 different mobility disability types in our data management system. So our main goals are to help individuals to be as independent as possible and active in their communities and we do that through a variety of different services that focus on goals from housing to sport and recreation to managing and dealing with the impact of disability.



Jenelle:Can you tell us a little bit more about your role within the organization?



Haley Flaro:Yes, so this is my 14th year, I believe. I’ll have to go look at my LinkedIn profile to remember, that I’ve been the executive director of the organization. So essentially my role is oversight responsible for human resources, finance, planning. I also am designated as our director of services cause we don’t have that position yet in our organization. So I oversee the professional development training of our our frontline staff and I also look after our government relations and public policy work with government. So that’s a big component, I’d say it’s about 30% of my role. One of my areas of interest and passion aside from public policy is performance management and evaluation. So that’s one of the skillsets I believe I bring to the organization and there’s always a lens I’m looking through.



Jenelle:It’s interesting you mentioned the significant amount of time that would be spent on public advocacy. It’s certainly of the reasons I think that the organization has been so well profiled and certainly successful in the impact work that ability new Brunswick’s been able to do is because of the ability to create change and influence within the province. You started to speak a little bit about you’ve also been spending time or will spend portions of your position within performance evaluation. Can you speak a little bit about a specific metric that you feel really highlights the impact of Ability New Brunswick?



Haley Flaro:Definitely, so to give some context, when I started here 13 years ago we were many nonprof...