About
Welcome! I’m Erin Whitmore, founder and CEO of Edgework Counselling & Consulting. I’m a strategic leader, consultant, and registered social worker based in Ottawa, Ontario. Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked in frontline crisis counselling, led a national non-profit, and collaborated with governments and grassroots organizations to address violence against women and advance gender equity in Canada.
What has guided me through these roles is a deep curiosity about the stories people carry and the conditions that shape them. I’ve seen firsthand how trauma, inequities, and systemic pressures show up in people’s lives, and also how resilience and creativity can spark change.
As a registered social worker, I bring this lens into everything I do. My consulting practice is rooted in the realities of non-profit work where change is constant, resources are limited, and people are often asked to do extraordinary work under equally extraordinary pressure. My counselling practice offers a reflective space for leaders and frontline workers to restore balance, process their experiences, and reconnect with the purpose that brought them to this work.
I created Edgework Counselling & Consulting because I believe that community-based organizations and the people within them carry unique expertise in imagining more possibility-rich futures. My work is about amplifying their expertise and offering steady support behind the scenes so they can sustain their vision, nurture their teams, and deepen their impact.
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Erin Whitmore is a strategic leader with extensive experience in non-profit management at both the national and community levels. As the Executive Director of the Ending Violence Association of Canada from 2019 to 2024, Erin shaped and led the organization’s national advocacy efforts aimed at building a unified, coordinated voice to address sexual violence in Canada. Prior to this role, Erin served as a Senior Researcher for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She has also worked in research and policy analyst roles with a variety of government and community-based organizations. In these roles, she led multiple national and provincial-level community-based research projects focused on a range of gender equity issues.
Erin holds a PhD in English Literature (UNB), an MA in Canadian and Indigenous Studies (Trent), and a Master of Social Work (Dalhousie), which brings a unique interdisciplinary perspective to her work. As a registered social worker, Erin’s policy, research, and advocacy efforts are deeply informed by her extensive direct practice experience supporting survivors of sexual violence. Recognized as a subject matter expert on sexual and gender-based violence, Erin has appeared as a witness in numerous House of Commons committees and studies, as well as participated in various federal, provincial, and community-based consultations and working groups. She is a member of the Ontario Association of Social Worker’s Board of Directors. Erin currently leads Edgework Counselling & Consulting where she continues to support individuals and organizations in identifying and promoting evidence-informed and possibility-rich solutions to complex and systemic social challenges.
Why Edgework?
I chose to name my practice Edgework to reflect feminist understandings of edges as sites of resistance, potential, and transformation that emerge at the in-between and liminal.
Edges invite attention to what is often overlooked or unsettled. They are places of rupture and imagination where boundaries blur and new ways of relating become possible.
Edgework, as I understand it, is the ongoing practice of engaging those spaces: between the personal and the political, the individual and the collective.
PRINCIPLES THAT GROUND MY WORK
Possibility
Honouring that everyone carries a possibility story about the future and working to foster both the personal and systemic conditions that bring those stories to life.
Intersectionality
Recognizing that people’s lives are shaped by the intersecting forces of identity, history, and structure, and always working with awareness of the broader contexts we move within.
Accountability
Committing to practices that align intention with action and holding systems, institutions, and ourselves responsible for the worlds we help create.
Critical Thinking & Compassionate Presence
Combining critical inquiry with empathy, curiousity, and deep listening to invite reflection, learning, and change.