VCHC Board Members

Mark Sherman is a physician practicing at the James Bay Community Project. He is a founding member and one of the driving forces in the creation of the health cooperative. He is currently the President of the Board of Directors of the cooperative. His interests include facilitating board meetings and groups, funding, business planning, and health education.

James Christian is a medical herbalist. His interests include practitioner development, health education, group facilitation, and business planning. In the long term, he is interested in having the co-op develop a herb garden and reuniting people with plants.

Chris Mather has a financial background and brings that extensive experience to help in developing the financial resources and strategies of the co-operative.

Dr. Ian MacPherson has been involved with co-operatives as an elected official and a researcher for most of his adult life. He has served on the boards of consumer co-ops (Winnipeg and Saanich), a child care co-op, credit unions (Victoria and the BC Central Credit Union, where he was chair of the board for three years), the Canadian Co-operative Association (he was the founding President), various other national co-operative organizations, and on the Board of the International Co-operative Alliance (where he had the pleasure of helping to create its international health co-op committee).  Ian coordinated the project and wrote the documents whereby the members of the International Co-operative Alliance adopted a Co-operative Identity Page at its Manchester conference in 1995.

Ian has travelled extensively within the co-operative world and he has seen health co-operatives of various kinds serve their members and their communities well. From 2000 to 2008 he was the founding director of the BC Institute for Co­operative Studies at the University of Victoria. In that capacity he found the funds for, and supervised, three projects examining the roles and possibilities of health co-operatives.