About the Workshop Leaders

 

Pamela Smit, Veradus Consulting
613 820 7036

psmit@veradus.com

Pamela excels at enabling organizations to adapt to change—and thrive. Through her planning processes she helps clients clarify shared organizational visions and define new directions. Applying well-honed management skills, she supports organizations as they translate their intentions into practical, effective processes and services. Pamela's exceptional meeting-design and facilitation skills enable client teams to discuss and explore critical issues and opportunities. She seeks out the inherent simplicity in complex situations and concentrates on presenting information in practical, relatable ways. By asking tough, insightful questions, Pamela allows clients to discover breakthrough answers—to ‘speak their own truths', as the Latin meaning of her company name implies. She has worked with a range of multi-stakeholder initiatives in the health and social services sectors – often supporting clients to broker partnerships with other well-aligned organizations. Her strengths are twofold, residing both in the proficiency of her processes and the depth of her content-specific expertise developed over a 20-year span in the health and social services sectors. Pamela holds a Master's in Rural Planning and Development from the University of Guelph . She has worked as a planner and community developer in community health centres in Ontario and as a Program Associate in the Ministry of Health and Long-term Care. Pamela is an affiliate of the Ginger Group Collaborative, a Canada-wide consulting collective.

Anne Wright, Anne Wright and Associates

613 226 2232

annewright@sympatico.ca

Anne specializes in helping people and groups move ‘beyond their edge'. She is a certified integral coach (Integral Coaching Canada ), trainer, facilitator, yoga teacher, and planner. She serves part-time on the faculty of Integral Coaching Canada (integralcoachingcanada.com). Anne's career has focused on supporting community-based change initiatives within organizations, partnerships and communities. She brings to this work more than 15 years of experience in consulting to foster change and innovation in the human-services sectors.

After earning a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning from Queen's University (1983), she joined Ottawa Public Health as its first strategic planner, and then served as its Director of Community Affairs. She played a pivotal role in helping to shift public health into a population-based approach. In 1990, she launched a small consulting firm focused on community-based change.

Despite creative and varied types of interventions, she saw ambitious plans become stale and have the unintended side-effect of building cynicism and disappointment. That led her to found a community of practice, the Ginger Group Collaborative (www.gingergroup.net), and eventually to train as a coach. Coaching enables her to help individuals accelerate their growth into the shifts required by the challenges they are facing. She now combines coaching with consulting to support individuals and groups to extend their capacity while developing plans and undertaking projects. Anne lives in Ottawa with her partner and 2 cats and is the mother of a grown son.