Oksana Bashuk Hepburn: UCPBF president for 1999-2000 (09/05/99)

Oksana Bashuk Hepburn: UCPBF president for 1999-2000

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Upon announcing the new slate of the Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Federation's executive for the 1999-2000 term at the body's biennial convention on July 3, event organizer Raya Shadurska provided a biographical sketch of the incoming president, Oksana Bashuk Hepburn.

Born in Ukraine, Oksana Bashuk-Hepburn immigrated to Canada with her parents after the war and settled in Winnipeg. She graduated with a B.A. in political science from the University of Manitoba in 1963 and joined the federal public service that year, moving to Ottawa in 1965.

In 1970 she traveled to Australia to be with her first husband (the late Lubomyr Zyla) during his three-year diplomatic posting in Sydney, and set up a management consulting business while there. Returning to Ottawa, she ran her consulting firm until she rejoined the public service at the executive level in 1980, working as a "troubleshooter" at the Federal Treasury Board.

Over the course of the next 13 years, Ms. Bashuk Hepburn handled a number of top-level bureaucratic tasks. She served as director of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and of Health and Welfare Canada.

In her capacity as senior executive advisor to a number of ministries, she was instrumental in the formation of tripartite community-government-industry consultation boards at the ministries of Labor and the Environment; was part of a team that reorganized the Canada Transport Investigation Board, which deals with marine, rail and air traffic accidents; and oversaw executive personnel programs at the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board.

In 1991 she left the public service to found Ukraine-Canada Relations Inc. (UCAN), a consulting firm that oversees governmental exchange programs between the two countries. Two of Ukraine's prime ministers - Pavlo Lazarenko and Valerii Pustovoitenko - have been high-profile participants.

Also in 1991 she remarried. She and her husband, Ken Hepburn, run Bashuk Hepburn Associates, a consulting firm handling non-Ukrainian contracts.

In 1998 Ms. Bashuk Hepburn was elected president of the Ottawa branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

| Home Page |