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Helen Cooper graduated from Queen’s with a B.Sc. in Chemistry and Mathematics, then worked for a year as a chemist at Procter & Gamble in Hamilton. With a yearning to see a wider world she signed up with CUSO for a two-year stint teaching in a girls’ boarding school in northern Tanzania. She then completed an M.Sc. at the London School of Economics in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. Upon her return to Kingston with two young children she was elected as a municipal councillor in 1980. In the ‘80s she was also elected by the Queen’s University Council to serve on the Board of Trustees. She ran successfully to become Kingston’s first woman mayor from 1988 to 1993, then began a three-year term as Chair of the Ontario Municipal Board. In the early ‘90s Helen served as President of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario as well as a member of the Premier’s Council on Health Strategy and the Ontario Round Table on Environment and Economy. From 1997 to 2006, she served on the board of Cancer Care Ontario. From 2001 to 2006 she was a member of the Advisory Council of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. From 2006, Helen was a manager within the Ministry of Community and Social Services, most recently with program delivery for adult developmental services until her retirement at the end of 2014. She has subsequently indulged in a great deal of travel both in North America and abroad, including the long-held goal of completing Route 66 in the USA. Her current volunteer enthusiasms are the Queen’s School of Policy Studies where she is a Distinguished Fellow, the Aging Well at Home project for the Frontenac Lennox & Addington Ontario Health Team and the establishment of a national organization for Oasis Communities for Aging Well, a project led by the faculty of the Queen’s School of Rehabilitation Therapy.