Go to content

ICES announces changes to its board of directors

Share

ICES is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Kevin Smith as the new chair of the ICES board of directors as well as welcoming new members Dr. Sarita Verma and Jane Badets. ICES also thanks Matthew Anderson who has retired as board chair after six years of dedicated board service.

“Matthew Anderson brought his considerable experience in Ontario’s health system, including leadership roles in hospital and community networks to the ICES board for many years,” said ICES CEO Michael Schull. “We extend a hearty congratulations to Matthew on his new role of president and CEO of Ontario Health.”

New board chair Dr. Kevin Smith is president & CEO of University Health Network (UHN), Canada’s largest research hospital. Kevin has spent his career at the interface of the university and academic hospital and is passionately committed to the mission of education, research and exemplary clinical care. Kevin is a pioneer in advancing integrated care models. His work and leadership have resulted in the expanded introduction of quality-based procedures and bundled funding initiatives by Ontario’s Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Educated in Canada, the U.S. and Great Britain, Kevin began his career in medical education, followed by leadership roles in university administration, academic hospitals and health systems. He is professionally certified in corporate governance by the Institute of Corporate Directors and the Harvard Program in Effective Governance.

Dr. Sarita Verma is the dean, president and CEO of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine. 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. Until January 2016, she 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 (2008-2015) and associate vice-provost, health professions education (2010-2015), she is a family physician who originally trained as a lawyer at the University of Ottawa (1981) and later completed her medical degree at McMaster University (1991). She has been a diplomat in Canada’s Foreign Service and worked with UNHCR in Sudan and Ethiopia for several years. Dr. 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. From 2009-2011, she was one of the lead consultants for the Future of Medical Education in Canada Postgraduate project.  From 2011 to 2015, she was the co-lead for the Canadian Interprofessional Health Leadership Collaborative (CIHLC) at the Institute of Medicine’s Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professions Education and was a key member of the Association of Academic Health Centers International Steering Committee. She currently sits on the Board of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Center 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) which is the governance in Kingston of the Queen’s University Alternate Funding Plan. For six years she held the position of governor at the University of Toronto. She has been a board member of several teaching hospitals, namely the Women’s College Hospital, North York General Hospital, Trillium Health Partners the Michener Institute, Associated Medical Services and a member of and chair of the Board of the National Canadian Residency Matching Service.

Jane Badets was Canada’s assistant chief statistician of social, health and labour statistics at Statistics Canada.  Throughout her career, Badets had responsibility for a broad range of social statistics from the census, surveys and administrative data sets, including statistics on health, demography, education, labour, income, justice, gender, ethno-cultural background, language, immigration and Indigenous Peoples. She was also responsible for Statistics Canada’s microdata access program, including Research Data Centres located across Canada. Badets also served as Statistics Canada’s representative on several boards, including the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN). She has appeared before Parliamentary Committees for Statistics Canada, and participated on international statistical committees.  In 2019, Jane was a co-recipient of the Mike McCracken Award in Economic Statistics.  More recently, she is a member of the Expert Advisory Committee for the COVID-19 Social Impacts Network, and has several forthcoming articles on measuring ethnicity in Canada and the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on immigrants.

The ICES community thanks Matthew Anderson (6 years), Laura Formusa (6 years) and Kathy Watts (5 years) for their years of service, and is pleased to welcome Sarita Verma and Jane Badets to the board and Kevin Smith to his new role.

ICES Board of Directors

Matthew Anderson

Matthew Anderson

Jane Badets

Jane Badets

Laura Formusa

Laura Formusa

Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith

Sarita Verma

Sarita Verma

Kathy Watts

Kathy Watts

Information

Associated Sites