Sarita Verma

Dr. Sarita Verma is the president, vice-chancellor, dean and CEO of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM). She was the vice-president, education at the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada and is a professor emerita in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Until January 2016, Verma was the associate vice-provost, relations with healthcare institutions and special advisor to the dean of medicine at the University of Toronto. Formerly the deputy dean of the Faculty of Medicine and associate vice-provost, health professions education, Verma is a family physician who originally trained as a lawyer at the University of Ottawa and later completed her medical degree at McMaster University. She has been a diplomat in Canada’s Foreign Service and worked with UNHCR in Sudan and Ethiopia for several years.

Verma is the 2006 recipient of the Donald Richards Wilson Award in medical education from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the 2009 co-recipient of the May Cohen Gender Equity Award from the Association of Faculties of Medicine in Canada and the 2016 recipient of the Charles Mickle Fellowship from the University of Toronto for excellence in medical education. She has also led and participated in multiple initiatives in medical and health education.

Verma currently sits on the board of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada and has recently been named to the board of the Health Sciences Network Research Institute in Sudbury. For many years she was a governor of the South Eastern Academic Medical Organization (SEAMO), and a governor at the University of Toronto. She has been a board member of several teaching hospitals and a member and chair of the board of the National Canadian Residency Matching Service.