Governance
BOARD MEMBERS
Adrienne Chan – Chair
Dr. Adrienne Chan is an Infectious Diseases physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr. Chan’s areas of interest include differentiated models of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) care and treatment delivery in low-resource settings, optimizing management of opportunistic infections in low-resource settings, and the health systems effects of emerging infectious diseases (Ebola, COVID-19, MPX). She holds a cross-appointment to the Clinical Public Health Division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, where she has taught Health Systems Management in International Settings. Dr. Chan worked in southern Africa, with clinical experience in Malawi, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe for over a decade. In addition, Dr. Chan underwent multiple research collaborations with regional and international networks. In 2007, Dr. Chan joined Dignitas International as the organization’s HIV Clinic Coordinator in Zomba, Malawi, and later became the Medical Coordinator for the Malawi country program. She previously worked at the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights under Dr. Jim Yong Kim, on policy research on increasing access to PMTCT and early childhood development interventions in resource-limited settings.
Virginia Cirocco
Virginia Cirocco is a former senior executive of Shoppers Drug Mart where she served as Executive Vice President, Pharmacy. During her 14 years with the company Virginia expanded the scope of professional services, strengthened the strategic focus and increased the healthcare portfolio and pharmacy business unit. Prior to this she held senior management roles in community pharmacy and logistics corporations. Virginia is a graduate of the Faculty of Pharmacy University of Toronto, holds an M.B.A. from Schulich School of Business and has obtained the ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors. She is currently on the Board of Bayshore Healthcare. Previously she was appointed to the Boards of the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation and Lobo Genetics. As a long-time supporter of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, she completed two terms on the Board of Trustees while serving on their Clinical Quality, Audit and Finance and Governance Committees. She continues to support them as a volunteer to the CAMH Foundation. During her career Virginia was appointed to the Board of Rx Canada and the Canadian Association of Chain Drug Stores where she also completed two terms as chair. She served on the Dean’s Advisory Committee and Campaign Cabinet, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto; Director, Israel Cancer Research Fund; was Chair Fundraising Committee, Blueprint for Pharmacy. She also supported Bridge TO Health, a Canadian NGO, and volunteered on their medical mission to Uganda in 2014.
Chris Dendys
Chris Dendys has extensive experience working in support of social justice and social impact domestically and internationally. She is a seasoned executive with a background in advocacy, government relations, strategic partnerships, and supporting grassroots movements. As Executive Director of Results Canada, Chris oversees all aspects of Results Canada’s organizational strengthening efforts, campaign strategy, and grassroots support and growth. Chris has also worked as a consultant, supporting several non-government organizations, and has held various positions in government, Parliament, and political offices. In addition to serving on the Board of Partners In Health Canada, Chris is also a Director on the Board of the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children’s Health (Can-WaCH), and is on the leadership group of ACTION, an international partnership of global health advocates. Chris has four children and lives in Ottawa.
Steve Dixon
Steve Dixon is an innovative global technology executive with experience building businesses inside Canada and outside Silicon Valley. He is Head of Partnerships for Paramount Commerce, the leading provider of pay-by-bank technology. Previously Steve served as a member of the initial leadership team at Wave Apps. He went on to lead the development of Facebook Canada’s tech/telco industry team and was most recently Apple Canada’s Canadian small business leader. Steve’s earlier years were spent building out the technology, media, and telecommunications industry practice at Deloitte, where he was a Canada Fast 50 Judge. Steve has actively supported community-oriented and not-for-profit organizations including The David Suzuki Foundation, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, and Junior Achievement of Central Ontario. Steve holds an Honours Degree in Business Communications from Brock University. In his “spare” time, Steve is raising 1-year-old twins. He and his family live in Toronto.
Michael Ghobros
Michael Ghobros is an experienced executive who has led various global organizations in different capacities. He is currently Technology Regulation Director of a large government agency. Michael is a seasoned leader with a strong technical and IT background and has accumulated extensive experience as a senior technical executive in large complex environments in both the private and public sectors. He has over 15 years of strategic and operational IT leadership experience. During these years, he has built a track record of delivering leading-edge digital solutions and executing technology transformational strategies. Michael holds a Master of Engineering in Technology Innovation Management (TIM) from Carleton University and is a Project Management Professional (PMP) as well as a Professional Engineer of Ontario (P.Eng). Michael has also served, in various roles, on the Board of Directors for the Project Management Institute Lakeshore Ontario Chapter (PMILOC) including Board Chair and is actively involved in several community-oriented not-for-profit activities.
Cynthia (Cindy) Harrison
Cindy is a Speech Language Pathologist and co-founder of ACT Learning Centre and ACT’s sister company, CommuniCare Therapy. Cindy’s area of clinical focus is the provision of assessment and treatment of children, adolescents, and adults with autism spectrum disorder, developmental disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and global developmental delays. Cindy holds a post-graduate certificate in DIR/Floortime and is the only Master Trainer for The Play Project in Canada. Cindy is Senior Faculty for Profectum, a New Jersey-based international online learning organization that specializes in offering post-graduate training in the Developmental Individual Difference (DIR/Floortime) model for clinicians wishing to work with children, youth and adults with autism, intellectual disabilities, and developmental disabilities. Cindy is currently teaching in Profectum’s Training Program educating occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, educators, and physicians in the DIR model in their practice settings. Cindy is a well-known public speaker who trains and educates clinicians and parents in North America and abroad. Cindy holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Western Ontario and a Master of Science in Speech-language pathology from the University of Vermont. She is highly active in her community and serves on several boards and community associations.
Jia Hu
Dr. Jia Hu is a public health physician and family doctor. He is a public health physician at the BC Centre for Disease Control where his work focuses on upstream determinants of health. Additionally, he is a Corporate Medical Director with Cleveland Clinic Canada where he supports large employers on health and wellness and co-founder of 19 To Zero, a not-for-profit aimed at promoting vaccine uptake and other important aimed at promoting important public health behaviours like vaccination and cancer screening. He was previously a Medical Officer of Health with Alberta Health Services where he helped lead and coordinate many aspects of the COVID-19 response and a management consultant with McKinsey & Co.
Rosemary McCarney
Rosemary McCarney is an award-winning humanitarian, business leader, author, and a recognized public speaker and media commentator. Her extensive career in law, business, academia, the not-for-profit sector, and diplomacy has taken her to over 100 countries. She has served on the Boards of numerous organizations. She was the first Executive Director of the Canada United States Law Institute, has practised law in the US and Canada, and has held executive positions in the technology sector and civil society. In 2015, Rosemary became CEO of Plan Canada International. In 2015 she was appointed Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. After returning to Canada, she joined Trinity College as the inaugural Pearson Sabia Visiting Scholar in International Relations, where she was named the Graham Massey Senior Distinguished Fellow in Foreign and Defence Policy. She lectures in the IR Faculty at Trinity College in Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Governance. She is a passionate multilateralist, a committed advocate for human rights and human rights defenders and the power of diplomacy, consensus building and interdisciplinary perspectives to address the challenges of our time. Her award-winning series of children’s books, intended to make social justice and human rights issues accessible to young readers, have been translated and published worldwide.
Ryan Meili
Ryan Meili is a family physician with a focus on health equity and a lifelong advocate for healthy public policy. He has practiced medicine in rural and Northern Saskatchewan, inner-city Saskatoon and rural Mozambique. He currently works as a tuberculosis specialist serving the Athabasca region of Northern Saskatchewan and at the West Side Community Clinic. Ryan lives in Saskatoon with his wife, Mahli Brindamour – a paediatrician with a special interest in tropical medicine, refugee health and tuberculosis – and their sons Abe and Gus. In late 2023 and into spring 2024, the family lived in Maseru, Lesotho where Ryan and Mahli supported the work of Partners In Health at the Botšabelo MDR-TB Hospital. In 2017, Ryan put the concept of politics as “medicine on a larger scale” into practice, running to become a Member of the Legislative Assembly for Saskatoon Meewasin and serving as Leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party and Leader of the Official Opposition in Saskatchewan from 2018-2022. He is the author of two books with UBC Press: A Healthy Society: How a Focus on Health Can Revive Canadian Democracy and A Healthy Future: Lessons from the Frontlines of a Crisis.
PIH FOUNDERS
Ophelia Dahl
Ophelia Dahl co-founded Partners In Health, which began in Haiti’s rural Central Plateau more than 30 years ago and now serves millions of patients in 11 countries on four continents around the world. PIH’s community-based model has helped to redefine what’s possible in health care delivery in settings of poverty, proving that HIV, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, and other diseases that stalk the poor can be effectively treated in communities from Peru to Rwanda to West Africa. Dahl led PIH as executive director for 16 years and now chairs its Board of Directors. She continues to write, teach, and speak about the health and rights of the poor, moral imagination, and accompaniment. Dahl also helps to lead the Roald Dahl Literary Estate, which manages the works of her late father, the writer Roald Dahl. She is a Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, and a trustee of Wellesley College, her alma mater. Dahl is a recipient of the Union Theological Seminary’s Union Medal and, together with her PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. She lives in Cambridge with her family.
Paul Farmer
Dr. Paul Farmer, physician and anthropologist, was chief strategist and co-founder of Partners In Health, Kolokotrones University Professor and chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He also served as U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Community-based Medicine and Lessons from Haiti. Dr. Farmer has written extensively on health, human rights, and the consequences of social inequality. His most recent books are In the Company of the Poor: Conversations with Dr. Paul Farmer and Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction, and To Repair the World: Paul Farmer Speaks to the Next Generation. Dr. Farmer passed away in Rwanda in 2022.
Jim Yong Kim
Dr. Jim Yong Kim is Vice Chairman and Partner at Global Infrastructure Partners. Kim co-founded PIH, where he developed treatment programs for MDR-TB and AIDS in Haiti, Peru, and several other countries. From 2003 to 2005, Kim served as Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department. In 2009, he was named the 17th President of Dartmouth College. Pres. Barack Obama nominated Kim to become the 12th President of the World Bank Group, a position he held from July 2012 to February 2019.
Todd McCormack
Todd McCormack is a co-founder of Partners In Health and has supported his friend, Paul Farmer since they first met at Duke University in 1978. He serves on the Board of Trustees and Board of Directors, focusing much of his time stewarding and collaborating with fellow Trustees to bring untapped resources to support PIH’s mission. He also chairs PIH’s Governance and Nominating Committee. McCormack is a Senior Corporate Vice President at IMG.
Tom White
Tom White enabled Partners In Health to do “whatever it takes” to improve the lives and health of patients in vulnerable communities around the world. The owner and president of construction company J.F. White Contracting Co., he helped found PIH with his first $1 million donation and then systematically gave away his wealth by selling his company, his assets, and his house to continue supporting PIH. He passed away in Boston on Jan. 7, 2011.