Gail and her work

I was 21 years old when I was hired at Interval House as a full-time counsellor/collective member. This photo was taken in 1982 at the first collective retreat I’d ever attended. Under discussion were the ways in which the collective could communicate most constructively.

The 1982 retreat: the flip charts tell the story of our new communications model. Over the years. phrases like Appreciation, Held Resentment, Paranoid Fantasy and Constructive Criticism became part of the collective lexicon.

The collective was a crew of extremely accomplished women. Here I am on the left with colleague Christine Conlin in the centre of the photo.

When I joined the collective in 1982, Lynn Zimmer took me under her wing, becoming one of the most important influences on my professional life. She engaged me in the fundraising work of the shelter, which was desperately needed (no provincial funding then). I saw how the ability to raise money meant independence, being able to get things done, and activating a community. I was hooked. We built a direct mail program that now raises millions. On the left is Cheryl Gorman, a hugely talented and very funny colleague. Lynn left Interval House in 1984 putting the fundraising mostly in my hands. Cheryl and I worked together for several more years.

We often hosted the collective at each other’s homes. This day it was my turn. In 1988, the collective included BACK ROW STANDING: Me (pregnant with my first child), Arlene McCalla, Sandy McKee, Nadine Chan, Sandra Janz, Michele Kuhlman, Mary Preston. MIDDLE ROW: Silvia Samsa, Linda Marcinkiewicz FRONT ROW: Lesley Ackrill, Susi Edwards, Susan Goodfellow.

In 1987 at the annual picnic Interval House hosted for residents and ex-residents: Being close to the children filled me with joy and I loved them. Over the years, I’ve run into ex-residents as we pass each other on the street or shopping. Great moments.

When I left Interval House in 1990 and hung out my shingle as a consultant to women’s organizations, I almost immediately began to work with the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC), Canada’s largest women’s group with more than 600 organizations as its members. As NAC navigated major government agendas and their impact on women, then President Judy Rebick and I became close. In fact, it was her involvement that got me on board with the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce. One thing about working with a leader like Judy Rebick – it was clear you’d get nowhere as a shrinking violet. She never backed down from a fight and influenced me a lot.

In 1991, I met film director Francine Zuckerman who was developing a film project based on Esther Broner’s 1985 novel A Weave of Women. I was helping raise money for the development phase of the film. Gloria Steinem, a good friend of Esther’s, was also involved. Here we are at a party hosted by the late Estherelke Kaplan in Toronto. Gloria gave a rousing speech and is a brilliant fundraiser herself. I was especially happy that evening because I’d just found out I was pregnant with my second child.

At a NAC strategy meeting in 1993. While NAC received funding from the Secretary of State, we were working to increase NAC’s donor base and create a diversity of fundraising sources. Here I am, making the case for something, I don’t remember what. Sitting next to me is Jeri Stubbings, NAC’s direct mail coordinator, who later came to work with me at Gail Picco Associates.

In 1994, I worked with Sunera Thobani who became president of NAC after Judy Rebick. We were celebrating a deal we had just negotiated with Random House Canada where NAC had its own publishing imprint. Artist Barbara Klunder holds up the tee she’d designed to commemorate NAC. (Barbara also designed the t-shirt for the Rolling Stones 1994 Voodoo Lounge Tour.) At right is Doris Anderson, president of NAC from 1982 to 1984, a well-regarded “leading Canadian feminist” and columnist in the Toronto Star. I publicly resigned from NAC in the spring of 1994 when the board of directors of NAC wouldn’t back the deal Sunera and I had negotiated.

This photo is by Toronto Star staff photojournalist Patty Gower. It appeared in the Toronto Sunday Star with a full-page story on my resignation from NAC. (NAC was a big deal in those days and well-covered by the media.) Doris Anderson wrote a column about the kerfuffle saying we (Sunera and I) were “dreaming in Technicolor” if we thought a partnership with Random House Canada could ever happen. The ruckus happened at a time NAC was being criticized for its treatment of women of colour. This was not the only time I’ve felt disappointment in “Canada’s leading feminists” but this cut very deeply, particularly because I would no longer be working with Sunera, who I admired and grown quite fond of.

Big news in 1996. The company I’d started in 1990 and run out of the basement of my house, had grown to the point where we needed real office space. With luck and grace, Gail Picco Associates (GPA) was able to move into the second floor of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario at 43 Queen’s Park Crescent. This picture is from the opening celebration. I’m holding one side of a cake with the hugely talented Claire Rochon hanging on to the other. Claire had recently come on staff. And the child I was carrying in 1992 had turned into a world class photo bomber – my son Evan. (Reference in photo caption of pic with Gloria Steinem and Esther Broner)

In the early years, I called on Kristin Thomson and Andrew Tarbet, talented, smart and socially conscious actors, who had just graduated from The National Theatre School, who could fill any staffing gap. They were particularly helpful in the video work the firm was doing at the time. Here they are in front of the foam core poster board with my name on it – the first thing I saw when I walked into the office every morning. (Just in case I forgot.) Andrew and Kristin are now award-winning actors of stage and screen.

Having established an office, the next step was exhibiting at AFP Toronto’s Congress & Trade Show in 1996. GPA was one of two women-owned businesses out of 50 exhibitors. The other exhibitor CrawfordConnect was an executive recruiting firm owned by the late Jean Crawford. Jean and I had a long and depressing conversation about it. Now owned and run by the great Deborah LeGrove, CrawfordConnect is still going strong. I'm in the booth with Andrew Tarbet. Just to the left of Andrew is the gold ribbon we won for best booth. An auspicious start maybe? But we worked hard at making a splash.

The Federation of Women Teachers’ Association (FWTAO) was a communications client for GPA and hugely supportive of our work. We directed two award-winning provincial campaigns for them and had the privilege of directing a 30-minute video piece called Taking the Lead to commemorate their last year as an independent women’s organization. A Supreme Court of Canada decision, citing ‘discrimination,’ meant its 41,000 members merged with their 16,000 male equivalents in the Ontario Public School Teachers' Federation (OPSTF) creating the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). I’m with the last president of FW at the Taking the Lead screening in 1997.

At the FWTAO screening of Taking the Lead in 1997, Andrew Tarbet, Kristin Thomson and I obviously have our eye on something.

The GPA CEO shot in my office at 43 Queen’s Park Crescent.

The 2000 English launch of the Unite Against Racism campaign, the largest anti-racism campaign ever conducted in Canada, on behalf of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) l – r: Paul Wong, Rion Gonzales, Art Miki, me, Cynthia Lickers and Michael Jarvis. Art Miki was president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians when it negotiated the Japanese Redress Agreement for those interred by the Government of Canada during WW II. The creation of CRRF was part of that agreement. Paul, Rion, Cynthia and Michael were the film artists I hired to create a series of television spots.

The public launch of Women’s Habitat capital campaign in 2015 at the AGO’s Galleria Italia.

The Women’s Habitat campaign’s case for support.

Women’s Habitat Campaign Launch: With lead donor Moray Tawes.

Embracing a Women’s Habitat ex-resident who was an integral part of the story of the campaign.

At the book launch of my first novel What the Enemy Thinks. Daughter Katie is riding shotgun.

I served two stints as chair of the Regent Park Film Festival. Here I’m pictured having about as much fun as allowed at a strategic planning meeting. Sponsors were so supportive. I loved working in Regent Park, hearing the youth telling their stories for the first time, bringing films from all over the world that spoke to urban alienation and working with an amazing staff. Especially executive director Ananya Ohri whose mother I worked with at Interval House!

Women in Trades and Technology WIT (Women in Trades) campaign launch, a national effort to encourage women to work in high-paying trades.

Women in Trades and Technology WIT (Women in Trades) campaign launch. Are the talking points in order?

As part of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers with two interns attending the Profusion Trade Show for the film and television industry in Toronto in 2024.

As part of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers with two award-winning filmmakers at the Reel Asian Film Festival in 2024.

Gail Picco was born and raised just outside St. John’s but has called downtown Toronto home for many years.

At the age of 21, she was hired as a counsellor at Interval House Toronto, North America’s first shelter for assaulted women and their children. Over the eight years of her work there, she heard first-hand from shelter residents—women and children—about the horrors they’d experienced and saw for herself the scars left by the violence. It was the most formative experience of her life.

In the early years of her career Gail learned that while women in crisis needed help one of the root causes of violence against women is economic inequity. That point of view formed the foundation of her professional life.

As founder and CEO of Gail Picco Associates, a consulting firm she devoted to building awareness of social justice causes, a firm she successfully built and sold, Gail served clients that included some of Canada’s most well-known charitable brands alongside community groups fighting for their underrepresented constituencies.

Gail is now a veteran strategist, writer, and consultant in Canada’s nonprofit and charitable sector, with more than three decades of experience in philanthropy, fundraising, public policy, and organizational leadership. Her reputation is built on helping organizations advance ambitious social justice goals.

In addition to her consulting work, Gail has contributed to sector dialogue through writing, commentary and editorial leadership as an author, and as Editor-in-Chief of The Charity Report from 2020 to 2023, and her blog writing on Your Working Girl, which ran bi-weekly columns from 2010 to 2018.

Currently, she is serving as Campaign Director for the Canadian Women’s Chamber of Commerce (CanWCC)’s Self-Employed Women’s Initiative, helping lead a major effort focused on giving self-employed women a stronger voice and advancing solutions to economic inequality. In this role, she is in conversation with leaders, donors, and advocates to build support for work that’s grounded in the realities of women’s self-employment, the care economy, and the need for structural change in Canada’s economy.

Gail also has a busy writing life. She’s working on two screenplays set in Newfoundland, in the process of preparing another book on the charity sector, as well as a piece of historical fiction based on her father’s experience serving on a British minesweeper during WWII. Music has been a huge part of Gail’s life and is currently devoting a serious chunk of time to studying guitar and voice.