top of page

Meet Our Board

Board Chair

Nicole Picot

A fluently bilingual native New Brunswicker, Nicole is a retired public servant and long-time resident of Fredericton.

info@mysite.com  |  Tel: 123-456-7890

During her career, Nicole worked at the senior management level in a number of provincial government departments including Post Secondary Education Training and Labour, the Office of the Premier, Health, Executive Council, Social Development and Finance. She was the senior advisor to the Task Force on Aboriginal Issues under the chairmanship of Judge Grayson Nicholas and the Honourable Justice Gérard La Forest. In 2011, she took a leave of absence to serve as Vice President Communications for the Canadian Tire Corporation in Toronto. She returned to New Brunswick in 2012 to resume her service as Assistant Deputy Minister in several portfolios. In 2016, she was appointed Deputy Minister of Finance. In February 2019, Nicole joined NB Liquour as Vice-President Communications and Stakeholder Relations. She ran for MLA for the riding if Fredericton South in the fall of 2020 and went on to serve as Chief of Staff in the Office of the Official Opposition until her retirement in August 2020.

Prior to joining the New Brunswick public service in 1991, Nicole spent ten years in Toronto where she honed her craft in communications in the government, corporate and arts sectors with the Ontario Arts Council, Bregman + Hamann Architects and the National Ballet of Canada respectively.

Nicole has also served on numerous boards including the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, Service New Brunswick, the New Brunswick Highway Corporation, the New Brunswick Municipal Finance Corporation, the New Brunswick Lottery and Gaming Corporation, and Theatre New Brunswick. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the board of the Theatre New Brunswick Foundation. Nicole is the proud wife of Scot Hale, mother of Natalie and her husband Mathieu, and grandmother of Milo.

Executive Director

Philip Lee

Philip Lee is a Professor of Journalism and Communications at St. Thomas University. Lee’s first book, Home Pool: The Fight to Save the Atlantic Salmon, told the story of the decline of a species from New Brunswick,

info@mysite.com  |  Tel: 123-456-7890

 Quebec, Iceland and Scotland and was honoured by the Canadian Association of Journalists as the nation’s best investigative work. Lee’s biography of former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, Frank: The Life and Politics of Frank McKenna, was a national best seller. His exploration of love and families, Bittersweet: Confessions of a Twice-Married Man, was long-listed for the BC Award for Non-Fiction. As founding Director of the Journalism program at St. Thomas, Lee created successful academic programs in journalism, communications, public policy and helped launch the careers of countless young Canadian journalists. He also developed the Dalton Camp lecture series, broadcast annually by CBC’s Ideas programme since 2002. Lee has edited a published collection of essays from the Camp Lecture called The Next Big Thing. Lee’s latest book Restigouche: The Long Run of the Wild River (Goose Lane Editions 2020) was the winner of the New Brunswick Book Award for Non-Fiction.

Land Acknowledgement
The land on which St. Thomas University is located is the traditional territory of the Wolastoqiyik, WÉ™lastÉ™kewiyik / Maliseet whose ancestors along with the Mi’Kmaq / Mi’kmaw and Passamaquoddy / Peskotomuhkati Tribes / Nations signed Peace and Friendship Treaties with the British Crown in the 1700s. 

stu.png
logo.png

Contact : Philip Lee - Executive Director  plee@stu.ca

©2023 Frank McKenna Centre for Communications and Public Policy.

bottom of page