Cherry Team

Linda Poole
Founder, Artistic Creative Director
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Her career has largely been in Vancouver’s arts community with the Arts Club Theatre and young people’s theatre with Carousel Theatre as well as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Linda also represented Canada in Chicago and the Mid-West as Canada’s Cultural Attaché producing a wide range of large-scale cultural initiatives to showcase Canada’s top artists and arts organizations. She studied theater at UBC and Arts Management at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The cherry blossom brings so much joy to everyone that Linda believes “the world needs more cherry blossoms”! Her favorite saying from Issa’s haiku is well known ~ “there is no stranger under the cherry tree”

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Michael Dove
Executive Director
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After several years of producing in the US, Michael recently relocated to Vancouver. His artistic focus is on work that reconnects humanity with nature, highlighting our interdependence, and on creative expression that addresses the global climate crisis.

He was the founding Artistic Director of Forum Theatre in Washington DC where he produced over 60 theatre, dance, and performance art productions and garnered 13 Helen Hayes Awards nominations, winning 4. Recently, he co-produced the Digital Eye festival, in collaboration with the Goethe Institut and various European Embassies in DC and was the Artistic Director of the city-wide Samuel Beckett Centenary Festival, working with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. He was a regular attendee of the TESZT Euroregional Theatre Festival in Timișoara, Romania, reporting for the Center for International Theatre Development, and has travelled all over the world, participating in festivals in South Korea, Sweden, Mexico, Germany, Hungary, Scotland, Italy, Israel, and France.

Michael is an avid backpacker and a proud member of the Artist Brigade, a Canadian creative collective focused on bringing arts and artists to the front lines of climate action.

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Isanna Wong
Program Coordinator, Social Media Specialist
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In addition to managing VCBF’s social media and websites and helping with coordinating their wide variety of programs, she also has been involved in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s Imagine a Canada, International Baccalaureate student council, is an executive in the UBC CVC club, and has taken on a stylist and managerial role in the retail industry.