Claire Betker, RN, MN, PhD(c), CCHN(C)

Claire began her career in rural Manitoba in a single-nurse public health office working with several rural communities. Over the next 3 and half decades, she has worked in Public Health, Home Health and Primary Health Care at a local, regional, provincial and national level. Most recently, Claire has worked as an independent consultant. Prior to that, she was the Senior Knowledge Translation Specialist with the National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health with a focus on public health leadership to address the social determinants of heath and advance health equity.

Claire is a Certified Community Health Nurse. She is a past President of the Community Health Nurses of Canada, and has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Nurses Association. Claire is a PhD candidate in the College of Nursing at the University of Saskatchewan with a focus on public health leadership, equity and social justice.

Lianne Jeffs, RN, BScN, MSc, PhD

As the inaugural St. Michael’s Hospital Volunteer Association Chair in Nursing Research (2013-18), Dr. Jeffs is focusing on gaining insight into what are the most effective interventions to improve care transitions and health care system performance. Foundational to her research program is the use of an integrated knowledge translation approach that involves key decision makers and knowledge users, including patients, family members and caregivers. In addition, she is supervising undergraduate, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and collaborating with other researchers, decision partners and knowledge users to complete additional research in this area. Through these collective partnerships, Dr. Jeffs is leading teams that provide evidence on how to improve care transitions and health care system performance that will be informative and helpful to patients and their caregivers, health care professionals and health care decision makers. She has published extensively, presented globally and has received several awards for leading research, education and administrative initiatives.

Michael J. Villeneuve, RN, BScN, MSc

Michael Villeneuve is well known for his leadership and innovative thinking in nursing and health system policy, strategy and transformation. For more than 35 years he has held a variety of roles in nursing clinical practice, education, research, administration and policy. After serving as executive lead for the National Expert Commission, Mike took on the role of lecturer and associate graduate faculty in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto where he teaches public policy, leadership and administration, and was on the team that designed the new Master of Nursing program in Health Systems Leadership and Administration. Mike also is a health policy consultant based and serves as editor, health policy and innovation, for the Canadian Journal of Nursing Leadership. Since 2000, he has led and participated in numerous national and international health system and nursing initiatives in his roles as scholar in residence at the Canadian Nurses Association, a visiting consultant with the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development in Paris, and senior nursing policy consultant with the federal Office of Nursing Policy. Mike describes some of his work as the business of disruption and asking some of the hard questions about nursing and health care. He publishes and speaks widely about the importance of nursing leadership and action to health system transformation, and is author of the forthcoming first text on public policy for Canadian graduate nursing students (2016).