Special Guest Faculty

Guest Faculty have included:
Barry Posner, PhD, Dean, Graduate School of Business, Santa Clara University, California.
Co-author of “The Leadership Challenge” (Kouzes & Posner) and co-developer of the renowned Leadership Practices Inventory. The body of work has been praised by Business Week, Fortune Magazine and other key publications. “The Leadership Challenge” was named book-of-the-year by the American Council of Health Care Executives and has been translated into 15 languages.

Jim Kouzes is the Dean’s Executive Professor of Leadership, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University and co-author with Barry Posner of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, which has been translated into 15 languages and sold over 1.5 million copies. It was #3 on Amazon Editor’s Pick for the Best Business Books of 2007. It was also the winner of the 1995-96 Critics’ Choice Award and the 1989 James A. Hamilton Hospital Administrators’ Book Award. Jim is not only a highly regarded leadership scholar; The Wall Street Journal has cited him as one of the twelve best executive educators in the U.S.

Linda O’Brien-Pallas, RN, PhD is the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation and Canadian Institutes of Health Research National Chair in Nursing Human Resources. She is also the Co-Principal Investigator of the Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization and Outcomes Research Unit, and a Professor at the Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto. Dr. O’Brien-Pallas is a member of the Canadian Nursing Advisory Committee and the Board of Directors of the Canadian Nurses Association.

Judith Shamian, RN, PhD is the newly appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of VON Canada. A dynamic an internationally respected leader in health care and nursing, Dr. Judith Shamian was previously the Executive Director of the National Office of Nursing Policy since its inception in 1999. A Professor at the University of Toronto, Dr. Shamian’s research and work focus on healthy workplaces and healthy workforce issues, health care reform, leadership and health policy development. She has served on numerous boards and committees and is Past-President of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario.

Heather K. Spence Laschinger, RN, PhD is Professor and Associate Director Nursing Research at the University of Western Ontario, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences in London Ontario. Her research interests include workplace empowerment in nursing work settings and the impact of working conditions on nurses’ health and behaviours. Since 1992 Heather has been Principal Investigator in a program of research designed to investigate nursing work environments using Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s organizational empowerment theory.

Kathleen M. MacMillan, RN, BSc, MA, MSc is currently the Dean of Health Services at Humber College. Kathleen’s varied nursing experience spans clinical practice, education, administration, policy and research. She was the first Provincial Chief Nursing Officer for Ontario from 1999-2001, and in this role she led the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the province’s Nursing Strategy and Nursing Task Force recommendations.

Bonnie Adamson, MScN (Admin.), FCCHSE, is President and CEO of North York General Hospital, a 600 bed, multi-site community teaching hospital in Toronto. She was previously President and CEO of the Huron Perth Hospital Partnerships, an eight-hospital network in South-western Ontario. North York General Hospital carried out an extensive strategy development process in which the hospital identified and began creating an organization that will provide a higher level of care. The strategic development process resulted in a document titled Mapping our Future: Achieving Extraordinary Results. In addition to serving as a surveyor with the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation for eleven years, Bonnie has held multiple faculty appointments at the University of Western Ontario, and has served on the Board of the Institute of Clinical Evaluative Studies (ICES) in Toronto, the child Health Network of Ontario, and of the Canadian College of Health Service Executives. She is Chair, Hospital Report and sits on multiple committees of the Ontario Joint Policy and Practice Committee (JPPC). She has also authored numerous articles on health care leadership.

Sue Baptiste is the former Director of the School of Occupational Therapy at McMaster University. Sue came from England to Canada to pursue an occupational therapy career with a focus on the assessment and management of people suffering from chronic pain. Concurrently, Sue developed a keen interest in leadership and management, and made a major commitment to gain knowledge and credibility in the areas of professional development, ongoing adult learning and mentoring.

Throughout her clinical and executive management career, Sue developed a parallel life within the academic environment to the point where she chose to invest fully in her faculty appointment. Sue has just completed a sabbatical and has returned to her academic role as a full professor. She has consulted around the world in areas of chronic pain, problem-based learning, faculty development, curriculum reform and organizational change.

Recent academic endeavours have focused on workplace re-entry and change; professional roles and accountability within changing organizational structures; the development of the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM); the development of a self-assessment tool for the College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario (COTO); and, the redevelopment of the occupational therapy curriculum for the entry level master’s program which began at McMaster University in September 2000. Sue’s research will focus on workplace health and cultures.

Sister Elizabeth M. Davis is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland and Labrador. She is presently a doctoral student in Scripture at the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto. She has a B.A. and a B.Ed. from Memorial University of Newfoundland, an M.A. Theology) from the University of Notre Dame and an M.H.Sc (Administration) from the University of Toronto.

Prior to 1982, she was a high school teacher in several communities in Newfoundland teaching Mathematics, English and Religious Studies. From 1986 to 1994, she served as Executive Director of St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital, a teaching hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland. From 1994 to 2000, she served as the first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Health Care Corporation of St. John’s, a regional health board which brought together eight teaching hospitals and health centres, a school of nursing and a regional ambulance service.

She is presently the Chairperson of the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, Vice-President of the Medical Council of Canada, and member of the Board of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the Board of Regis College (Toronto School of Theology). She is a member of the Mercy International Research Commission sited in Dublin, Ireland. She is a part-time faculty member at St. Augustine’s Seminary (Toronto) where she teaches the Introduction to the Old Testament.

She served as one of three Commissioners on the Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening Newfoundland and Labrador’s Place in Canada (June 2002 – June 2003). Among her recent awards are the 2001 Performance Citation Award (from the Catholic Health Association of Canada), the 2001 Award For Excellence in Distinguished Service (from the Canadian Healthcare Association), an honorary Doctor of Laws from Memorial University of Newfoundland (May 2002), induction into the Alpha Sigma Nu Honour Society of Jesuit Educational Institutions (October 2003), and appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada (May 2004).

Rick Lash is the Expertise Leader for the Haygroup’s Organization Effectiveness and Management Development Practice. Rick holds a doctorate in psychology from the University of Toronto and is a registered psychologist and a certified executive coach. Rick has over 15 years of experience in the design and implementation of organizational change interventions including ways to accelerate and maximize the learning process and increase performance at the individual, team and corporate level. He is also widely recognized as an expert in creating cultures of continuous learning and developing emotional intelligence.

Rick has spoken widely on leadership development and organizational transformation. Rick is a regular conference presenter who has also written several articles for the Globe and Mail’s Careers section.

The Hay Group is a worldwide management-consulting firm that helps organizations assess, develop, motivate and reward their people effectively. It is the largest management consulting firm in the world specializing in human resources management.

In 1999, Hay Group formed a strategic partnership with Daniel Goleman, to support his research in the area of emotional intelligence. Hay has been working with clients to help put Goleman’s groundbreaking framework and research on human behaviour into practice and continues to work with Harvard University, Goleman and his colleagues in continuing research on organization effectiveness, leadership development and human behaviour.

For the past several years, the HayGroup has been a partner-sponsor of the Dorothy Wylie Nursing Leadership Institute. We are delighted to have them as partners in the evolution of the new Health Leaders Institute. For more information about the HayGroup please visit http://www.haygroup.com/ca/.

Ivy Felicidad Oandasan, MD MHSc CCFP FCFP, is an Associate Professor and Research Scholar with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. She was the project lead for the report of the Literature  Review and Environmental Scan for Health Canada’s Inter-professional Education for Collaborative Patient Centred Practice Initiative in 2004 and a literature review on Teamwork for the Canadian Health Sciences Research Foundation in 2005.

Ivy speaks widely on Inter-professional Education and Collaborative patient centred practice across Canada. She grounds her knowledge and practice of the theory of inter-professional education and collaborative practice through her work as a clinician, educator, researcher and administrator.

Lorie Shekter-Wolfson, Dean of Community Services and Health Sciences, George Brown College, Toronto, Ontario is responsible for the largest academic division in the college with a budget of $40 million and more than 4,500 full-time students. Lorie has been a member of the College’s senior management team since joining George Brown in 2002, and is currently leading an interprofessional learning strategy to better support the needs of a changing health care sector that demands a more collaborative, team based approach to patient care.

Lorie has extensive experience as a practitioner, administrator, consultant and educator in the health care system. She has worked for the Ontario government’s Ministry of Health leading the restructuring process for the province’s private hospitals as well as a project for the Management Board. She worked as a private consultant for the merger of several hospital departments and the implementation of the Toronto Community Care Access Centres (CCACs). For many years, Lorie was the Director of Social Work and Multicultural Health at the University Health Network’s Toronto Hospital.

Lorie has authored articles on social work and clinical education as well as two books relating to eating disorders and marital and family therapy. She is on Health Canada’s Interprofessional Education for Collaborative Patient-Centred Practice (IECPCP) National Expert Committee, is the Vice-Chair of the Canadian Association of Allied Health Programs and is an executive on the ‘Heads of Health Sciences’ for the Association of Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology of Ontario.

Lynne Sinclair is Director of Education at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Lynne holds academic appointments with the Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. Lynne has been actively leading interprofessional education initiatives locally, provincially and nationally. She is an investigator on several grants including a Royal College of Physician and Surgeons IPE Faculty Development project, a multi-site Health Canada IPE project and the Preceptorship arm co-lead for the Ontario MOHLTC funded project “Catalyzing and Sustaining Communities of Collaboration Around Interprofessional Care”.

Marian Walsh is President and CEO of Toronto’s Bridgepoint Health, an integrated network of programs and services focused exclusively on “changing the world” for the growing numbers of people living with complex chronic disease and disability.

Marian is a strong advocate for system transformation; has a track record of local and national health care leadership; believes in building relationships to create productive partnerships; has been called “the Futurist” by Canadian Health Care Manager; and is a strong and visible leader every day at Bridgepoint.

Linda McGillis Hall, PhD
Linda McGillis Hall is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto and a co-investigator with the Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization, and Outcomes Research Unit. Her research interests relate to determining the outcomes of nursing practice within the health care system and the quality of the work environment for registered nurses. Dr. Mc Gillis Hall has received a career scientist New Investigator award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and has developed a research program aimed at studying mechanisms of examining different staff mixes in the nursing workforce in Canada, the outcomes and quality of work life/ work environment for nurses, and the skills and knowledge needed for nurses to work effectively in a productive and cost efficient manner within the health care system. She is also currently leading the development of the nursing component of Hospital Reports in Ontario. Dr. Mc Gillis Hall has recently received a Premier’s Research Excellence Award for Excellence in research.

Mr. Robert Calnan, RN, BScN, M.Ed
Mr. Robert Calnan, RN, BScN, M.Ed, is the immediate Past- President of the Canadian Nurses’ Association. He is employed as the nurse manager for Burns, Plastics, Complex Wounds, EENT and General Surgery, Abdominal/ Thoracic Surgery and Urology at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria. Rob also served as president of the Registered Nurses Association of British Columbia (RNABC), and taught in two diploma nursing programs within the University of Victoria’s Collaborative Nursing Program. He is an outspoken nursing advocate who writes and speaks about the value of nursing and the future of health care in Canada.

Diane Doran, PhD, RN
Diane Doran is a Professor in the Faculty of Nursing and Associate Dean of Research and International Relations. Dr. Doran is a co-investigator with the Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization, and Outcome Research Unit, Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto and co-investigator of the Patient Safety Research Cluster, at the University of Toronto. She is a recipient of the Premiers Research Excellence Award and her research has been further recognized in receiving the Canadian Association University Schools of Nursing Award of Excellence in Nursing Research and the Dorothy Pringle Research Excellence Award from the Lambda Pi Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International. The foci of her research are the evaluation of methods for improving the quality of health care, the design and measurement of nursing sensitive patient outcomes, health care teams, and innovations in patient safety.