Board of Directors

Darrel I. Pink is the CEO and Registrar of the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents. He is a lawyer who brings expertise in legal ethics and regulation to the VON Board of Directors.

Darrel has devoted his career to the advancement of professional accountability, ethics and regulation in the legal sector across Canada and internationally. 

Darrel is currently the interim CEO and registrar of the College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents and was previously the executive director of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, a position he held for 28 years. He is a member of the Model Code of Conduct Committee and the National Admission Standards Steering Committee of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. 

As a consultant and a Canadian Bar Association member, Darrel worked with the law societies in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Ethiopia to strengthen governance, enhance regulation and improve access to justice in Eastern Africa’s legal sector. Darrel was selected by Canadian Lawyer magazine as one of Canada's top 25 most influential lawyers and judges in 2017. In the same year, he received the inaugural lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Association of Legal Ethics.

Deeply committed to volunteerism, Darrel has served as a director and chair on the national board for Volunteer Canada, on the board of the Metro United Way (Halifax) and on the founding board of CanLII. Darrel received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, was featured as a "Visionary Volunteer” in the Canadian Race Relations Foundation “150 Stories” series and was chosen by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) as its first "Access to Justice All-Star” from Nova Scotia.

Darrel earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Acadia University, his Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University and his Master of Laws in public and comparative law from the University of London/London School of Economics. He was called to the Bar in 1979.