Stand Up for Student Well-Being has been delivering effective programs for six years in Ontario. More than 2000 young people have benefitted from our programs. Our program delivery model is unique and our Student “Playbooks” have been developed by educators to maximize the impact on learning. Due to the critical and extensive need for this kind of programming, we are proud to be a registered charitable organization in Ontario, Canada to expand our work.
We would like you to meet our highly dedicated Staff Team.
Creative Team
Joel Buxton
Creative Director
We are thrilled to announce the addition of Joel Buxton to our team as Creative Director, who will be working with us to develop new and exciting programs for our comedy camps. Joel is a comedian and former highschool teacher with a strong background in stand-up, sketch comedy and screenwriting. He is looking forward to applying his experience to enrich our comedy camps experience. Joel has performed stand-up comedy for over a decade, appearing at JFL42, NxNE, CBC Music Festival, and produces his own shows at Toronto’s iconic Comedy Bar. He is an alumni of the Toronto sketch supergroup The Sketchersons, has released two sketch comedy albums, and assistant directed Second City Toronto’s 79th mainstage sketch revue.
Melissa Story
Program Manager
Melissa is a comedian with almost 20 years of experience in the Canadian Comedy Industry. She loves to tell hilariously animated stories and has a very unique perspective. She tackles human nature, work-life and relationships with biting wit and her trademark maniacal yet contained anger. Melissa fell in love with comedy in her early years as she developed her humor as a tool to make friends and endure enemies.
Melissa is a comedian, writer and actor who is also known as the co-creator of the sketch series ‘Story with Chong’, which has been nominated for two Canadian Comedy Awards and was a great success on the website ‘Funny or Die’. Melissa was invited to Just For Laughs for CBC’s ‘Stand Up and Pitch’ contest and has appeared in CBC’s illustrious Halifax Comedy Festival and the Burbank Comedy Festival. She also has a podcast ‘Story with Chong’ and is proud to be on the Yuk Yuk’s roster and enjoys performing in Clubs all across Canada.
Marc Hallworth
Lead Comedian Coach
Marc Hallworth is an actor, comedian and writer, who regularly does stand-up, sketch and improv comedy. He was part of NXNE and was a semi-finalist in the Toronto Comedy Brawl, and his sketch troupe Vest of Friends has won the Toronto SketchFest Best of the Fest Award, the Montreal SketchFest Best of the Fest Award, the Columbus Brew-ha-ha Producer’s Pick Award, as well as being named one of bite.ca’s “10 Troupes You Need To See Right Now.”Trevor Burnett
Lead Comedian Coach
Trevor Burnett is a graduate of the Second City Workshop Training Centre and brings a unique comedic stage performance experience with groups such as The Second City and Theatre Passe Muraille. He was People to People Citizen Ambassador and Delegate to Rwanda, Production Assistant for Late Night with Conan O’Brien and winner of the Toronto Theatre Alliance – Second City Annual Cross Cultural Scholarship.Jeremy Dobski
Lead Comedian Coach
Jeremy Dobski has been a coach with Stand Up For Student Well Being since 2017 and is an award winning stand up comedian and podcaster, with a background in writing, music and acting. He has toured across North America working with big names in comedy and entertainment, while finding his home at several Toronto comedy clubs. His sense of humour is varied between dark and honest to absurd and surreal. Jeremy graduated from Concordia University specializing in Creative Writing, and is most recently a certified personal trainer, health and wellness coach who focuses on the overall well being of his clients through working on motivation and behaviour change.Christel Bartelse
Comedian Coach
Christel Bartelse is an Actor, Storyteller, Writer, Creator and Teacher. She is the co-producer & co-host of the Toronto Storytelling Show, “But That’s Another Story”, currently held the first Sunday of the month. Recently Christel was awarded the 99-Second Story Grand-SLAM Winner. Christel teaches numerous workshops in improv, physical comedy, movement around the city and is a proud faculty member of Humber College, The Toronto Film School and George Brown College. She is also the Co-Founder and Operator of Comedy Coop- Canada’s first online comedy school for Women.
Keesha Brownie
Comedian Coach
Keesha Brownie is a Toronto-based comic and multi-disciplinary artist with a global reputation. Her dynamic comedy material includes act-outs, parody songs, and sometimes even backup dancers. Recently, Brownie is the Curator and Host of Stand-Up Stitches a virtual show broadcasted live at The Rose Brampton Theatre. So, whether sharing the stage with top comics or travelling across North America and the Caribbean, Keesha Brownie knows how to work the room and delivers better laughs than your weird uncle at Christmas time.
Chili Davidson
Comedian Coach
Toronto based comedian Chili Davidson is a graduate of the Humber College Comedy Writing and Performance program where he was nominated for the Mark Breslin Award for Stand-Up Excellence. After graduating, Chili continued performing stand-up, sketch and improv comedy in such venues and festivals as Yuk Yuks, Comedy Bar, The Bad Dog Theatre, Second City, UCB (LA) and Toronto Sketchfest. He’s also worked numerous jobs with youth including being a camp counsellor, party entertainer, and youth facilitator with the Learning Disabilities Association of Toronto District.James Island
Comedian Coach
James Island has performed comedy with legends like Joe Rogan, Russell Peters and “Big Jay” Oakerson in places from Toronto to Seoul to Mexico City. He also hosts an award-winning joke writing workshop in Toronto called “Joke Marmalade.”Harpreet Sehmbi
Comedian Coach
Harpreet Sehmbi is a Toronto based stand-up comedian, improviser, writer and actor. She is an alumni of Second City’s Toronto’s Longform Conservatory and Sketch Conservatory programs, and regularly performs stand-up all over Canada and the US. She’s headlined the Lady Laughs Comedy Festival in Wisconsin and the Chicago Women’s Funny Festival, and was featured in the North Carolina Comedy Festival and the 6th Borough Comedy Festival in New Jersey. She coproduces and hosts The Darjeelings of Comedy, showcasing South Asian identifying females, and The Anti-Token Comedy Show featuring comedians of colour in Toronto. Harpreet is the creator and star of a web series called INDIE-pendent.Kevin Shawanda
Comedian Coach
Kevin Shawanda is an up and coming Indigenous comic who grew up on the small reservation of Birch Island, Ontario. You can catch his brand of indigenous social comedy on stages all over the North and Online. He says he didn’t have much representation growing up on the reservation and had to learn everything from scratch. It’s been a dream of his to inspire kids and pass on his knowledge to kids to follow their dreams.Isabel Zaw-Tun
Comedian Coach
Isabel Zaw-Tun has performed at the Port Hope Comedy Festival and Montreal’s Zoofest. She also co-produces Hack Couture, Toronto’s one and only fashion comedy show. Her jokes have been featured on Buzzfeed, Huff post, Funny Or Die, The Chicago Tribune, and Tallboyz. She starred in a turboTax ad that has 43 thumbs down on YouTube.
Thanks to Greg Rodrigo for being our amazing webmaster!
Thanks to Madhu Thyagaraja, Chili Davidson, Sebastian Chow and Joey Crewe for their expert social media posts!
Thanks to Nic Rodrigo for his graphic arts skills!
We will be forever grateful to Kyle Woolven for his magic and skill as one of our original Comedian Coaches. We were thrilled to have the Fabulous Kenny Robinson on our team and learned so much from his many years in the comedy world. We wish Kyle and Kenny success in their future adventures.