Lili-Anna Pereša is President and Executive Director of Centraide of Greater Montreal since 2013. An engineer by training, she graduated from the École Polythechnique de Montréal in 1987 before going on to earn graduate degrees from McGill University and the Sorbonne in Paris. Ms. Pereša has headed agencies that serve vulnerable populations – including Montreal’s YWCA, One Drop, and Amnesty International France – for over the past twenty-five years. Prior to that she worked for about five years as a humanitarian worker, serving as Head of mission for CARE in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during an armed conflict, as a Volunteer Cooperant for Oxfam-Québec in Burkina Faso, and as a science teacher in Malawi. Her involvement in humanitarian aid has earned her numerous distinctions, including an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal and an appointment as Knight of the National Order of Quebec.