Biography - Cheryl McMillan

Cheryl joined the Early Childhood Community Development Centre in April 1995, as Bookkeeper and now is the organization’s Finance and Human Resource Manager. In this role she is responsible for maintaining an effective accounting system, preparing budgets and completing reports for all funders and donors such as the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Human Resources and Social Development Canada, Ministry of Child and Youth Services, Niagara Community Foundation and the Trillium Foundation. Cheryl also administers the organizations benefits, and ensures human resource policies and files are current. 

Prior to joining the ECCDC Cheryl worked in hospitality for ten years, primarily in bookkeeping but she also setup computerized systems for hotels in Niagara Falls and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Throughout Cheryl’s tenure with the ECCDC her roles and responsibilities have shifted from bookkeeper for the ECCDC and five different child care programs and nursery schools to Finance, Human Resources and Technology Manager.

In the fall of 2002 Cheryl took on managing the implementation of a computerized “Vacancy Management System” which enabled parents, employers and the Regional Municipality of Niagara - Children’s Services Division subsidy staff to locate vacancies when searching for child care space in Niagara. Eight years later this system remains the only one in Canada where child care vacancies can be searched by age group, days of the week, type of space required and viewed on maps by geographic areas.  Cheryl has also managed ECCDC’s website, database development and internal networking; provided IT support internally and externally to local child care programs; and managed Quality Child Care Niagara’s online reporting and data base system.

Cheryl is most proud of her ability to ensure effective and streamlined processes that capture the information and data for reporting requirements.