Ask Donna Iampieri about hockey and her passion for the game is written all over her face at the mere mention of the sport. In her new role as the executive director of the Hockey Canada Foundation, Iampieri assumes a central role in helping more kids get in the game she grew up loving and still feels just as passionately about today.

With a background in the not-for-profit health sector, Iampieri found her perfect match with an organization committed to promoting wellness through sport. The diehard fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Mark Messier – himself a supporter of The First Shift, a Foundation initiative – fills us in on where she’s been and where the foundation is going.

Where were you before the Hockey Canada Foundation?
“I started in the hockey world, working at CCM and then going on to my first sales director job at Frameworth Sports Marketing. From there I spent nine years at the American Cancer Society, learning all the ins and outs of philanthropy, fundraising and not-for-profit. Prior to starting with Hockey Canada, I was with the Heart and Stroke Foundation as their national senior manager for corporate partnerships. I’ve always been focused in two worlds – hockey for profit and not-for-profit fundraising in the health world.”

What is your favourite Team Canada moment as a fan?
“There are so many good ones. How can you dispute the 2010 Winter Olympics – the women’s team winning and the men’s Golden Goal? And the heart from the National Women’s Team at the 2014 Olympics – that was crazy. If I had to pick one, though, because I was there, it’s the 1987 Canada Cup in Hamilton, Ont., and Gretzky’s pass to Lemieux that beat [the Soviets]. It was so intense I felt the seats shaking.”

Why did this job interest you?
“It’s a perfect balance of my two passions. I love hockey; I was always in that world, and fundraising, I know that world. Initially I wasn’t aware of what the Foundation did. But when I started digging I learned about the Dreams Come True program and how over the past decade it’s supplied new equipment and helped cover registration fees so more than 800 underprivileged kids could play a game they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to play.

“I thought, ‘How can we let Canadians know what we’re doing?’ The one thing we all rally around is that jersey. We all have our own teams and we love our hockey, but when you put our pride on the line, hockey is everything. So I thought how great would it be able to really make an impact in a game that I love?”

What does the Hockey Canada Foundation do?
“So much has been done already, but there’s more to come down the road. We definitely want to continue to help bring more kids and more people to the game of hockey. We want to keep removing accessibility barriers like disabilities through sledge hockey, and financial barriers through the Big Play, Bauer’s First Shift and Dreams Come True to allow more underprivileged kids to play hockey. Just recently we had this amazing event in Lloydminster during the RBC Cup that got 30 more kids playing.

“Geographic location shouldn’t be a block to getting in the game. I loved learning about the Foundation’s efforts earlier this year to grow the game in Nunavut. Accessibility is a lot of things to a lot of people, but it’s doing whatever we can do to help get more people to the game. That’s why we’re here.”

What’s next for the Hockey Canada Foundation?
“It’s an exciting time for us. We’re looking to build a strategic plan and get out there and let Canadians know the impact we’ve been making all these years. It’s like we’ve been keeping it a big secret and we don’t want to keep it a secret anymore. I think Tom Renney said it best in that it’s citizenship and building a better society, leadership skills and all the great things that hockey brings.”