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Abbas Ghavam-Rassoul
Family Doctor & Director MScCH (Health Practitioner Teacher Education) & Medical Education Fellowship | University of Toronto, Department of Family and Community Medicine
Dr. Abbas Ghavam-Rassoul is a family physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. His diverse clinical practice includes the care of patients with serious persistent mental illness and HIV. He is actively involved in several projects aimed at increasing collaboration between family medicine and psychiatry in service delivery and trainee education. His teaching has been recognized by awards at the clerkship, residency and faculty development levels. He has held multiple educational leadership roles from organizing clerkship electives to being postgraduate education program site director at St. Michael's from 2007-2013.
He is currently Program Director for the MScCH in Health Practitioner Teacher Education, Medical Education Fellowship and Clinical Teacher Certificate programs in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.
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Amanda Binns
Program Lead: Teaching and Learning in the Clinical Context (TLC), Stepping Stones Program
Amanda is Education Development Lead for Clinical Teaching and the Program lead for the CFDs Teaching and Learning in the Clinical Context (TLC) and Stepping Stones programs. Amanda Binns, PhD is a clinician research and educator in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. She is an Assistant Professor at University of Toronto, and clinical manager of a Student-Led Environment at Holland Bloorview. Her program of research extends from years of experience providing interprofessional supports for neurodivergent children and their families.
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Arno Kumagai
Arno K. Kumagai is Professor and Vice Chair for Education, Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He also holds the F.M. Hill Chair in Humanism Education at Women’s College Hospital, University of Toronto, where he has a clinical practice focused on working with individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Arno received his BA in Comparative Literature from U.C. Berkeley, and his MD from UCLA. He finished his Internal Medicine Residency, Endocrine Fellowship and postdoctoral training in the UCLA system and was on faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School from 1996 to 2016. He joined the University of Toronto’s Department of Medicine in 2016. Arno has an international reputation in medical education scholarship with a focus on health humanities, humanism, and teaching for social justice in medicine. He is also Assistant Editor for the journal Academic Medicine.
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Beck McNeil
Beck serves as the Education Development Lead, Access and Inclusion for the CFD. He teaches and advises in the educational spaces of “EDI” and anti-oppression, and leads the Centre’s blended learning strategy with accessibility as its core principle. He has served in various roles of leadership development and education, focusing on transformative teaching for advocacy and equity. As a transgender person, he brings his lived experience to focus on the human experience of learning and health care at every level, and strives to integrate this into his work at all times. Beck holds an MBA in Organizational Studies from York University, an Advanced Master’s Certificate in Adult Training and Development from OISE, and is a graduate of the Education Scholar’s Program and the Gestalt Coaching Program.
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Ben Poynton
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Officer
Office of the Vice President Human Resources & Equity: Office of the Vice Provost Students
The University of TorontoBen Poynton, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Officer, provides tremendous support to the University of Toronto’s senior leadership on Accessibility, EDI and Universal Design. He has been instrumental in advancing the university’s AODA commitments through the application of an intersectional lens and a community-based approach. Much of the great work Ben has led or coordinated can be found in our most recent 2022 AODA Annual Report. Moreover, Ben was a member of the Postsecondary Education Standards Development Committee that worked towards developing the new proposed postsecondary education standards.
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Carmen Wiebe
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto
Staff Psychiatrist, Borderline Personality Disorder Clinic, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)In CAMH’s Borderline Personality Disorder Clinic, Carmen Wiebe offers individual therapy, group skills training and medication management within the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy programme. She coordinates University of Toronto psychiatry resident exposure to Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. She has taught across Canada on BPD and DBT, and has received national and international education awards. She has also been helping educators apply DBT communication strategies in educational settings.
CFD Program Faculty: Stepping Stones
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Cate Creede-Desmarais
New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program
Program Lead, New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program, Centre for Faculty Development
Partner, The Potential Group Consulting FirmCate is the Program Lead of the New and Evolving Academic Leaders program (NEAL) and is a Partner in the Potential Group consulting firm, which focuses on strategic change in academic healthcare and education. Cate is an educator, certified coach, and experienced strategy lead. Their focus has been on coaching, design, facilitation, capacity building and constructing effective conversations and processes that support systemic change and social innovation. They have supported more than 250 strategic change initiatives in higher education and academic and community healthcare across Canada in the past decade, and have been involved in intersectional feminist, gender and queer advocacy since the 1980s. Cate has a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems and holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, at the University of Toronto.
