Leadership Team

Dans la rue’s leadership team of experts and qualified professionals working on strategies to help youth get off the street for good.

Cécile Arbaud has been Executive Director of Dans la rue since mid-2013.

Cécile has a degree in engineering, an MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs in Paris and a certificate in psychology from the Université de Montréal. Throughout her career, she has successfully resolved a number of challenges as a manager and consultant for private, public and non-profit organizations in Paris, Vancouver and Montreal. Her responsibilities have extended to auditing, strategic planning, management systems implementation, process and structural overhauls, organizational development and change management.

The three pillars of her management approach are sharing experience, collective intelligence and individual development.

After training as a specialized educator, Caroline Dufour joined Dans la rue as a youth counsellor in 1997 and subsequently worked as a team leader for several units within the organization. In 2004, she became the youth counsellor coordinator and, in 2007, the manager of the front-line team. In her current role, to which she was appointed in 2012, she oversees outreach services in addition to developing and evaluating support programs available through Dans la rue. Since February 2018, Caroline Dufour is now director, strategy and social impact.

Her main professional focus lies in insecure living conditions and initiatives designed to advocate for youth rights and wellness. She is a firm believer in the value of alternative outreach experiences and projects that encourage, equip and empower individuals to get back on their feet.

Caroline has played an active role in numerous collaborative endeavours designed to address such themes as runaways, drug addiction, mental health and social housing. Backed by the expertise she has fine-tuned at Dans la rue over the years, she is uniquely positioned to enhance practices, legislation and planning in order to prevent youth homelessness and poverty.

Valérie Dubreuil joined Dans la rue’s team in April 2019.

A linguistics graduate with more than 20 years of experience in corporate social responsibility, philanthropy management and communications, she has built a solid reputation thanks to her collaborative approach and her proven ability to build effective partnerships.

Passionate about social and community impact, she has developed fundraising strategies over the course of her career, managed major fundraising campaigns, managed community investment programs in large corporations and coordinated volunteer activities with hundreds of organizations and foundations across the country, including several organizations working in the field of homelessness in Montreal.