New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program

Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Society, University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC)
Founder & Director, The Black Health Equity Lab (The BHEL)

Dr. Notisha Massaquoi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, with a graduate appointment in the Factor Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. She is also the founder and director of the Black Health Equity Lab (The BHEL) which conducts rigorous community based health research and works with Black communities to develop advocacy tools, strategies and programs to improve health outcomes, wellbeing and success in Canadian systems.  She holds a BA in Psychology from Western University, an MSW, and a PhD in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. Her early career established several health service organizations which serve Black communities in Canada, including Africans in Partnership Against AIDS, and TAIBU Community Health Centre. She developed and served for two decades as the Executive Director of Women's Health in Women's Hands Community Health Centre in Toronto – the only Community Health Centre in North America which provides specialized primary healthcare for Black and racialized women. She has consulted globally with the United Nations Social Development Forum on racism and its impact on workforces and with UNAIDS on organizational responses to HIV and migration. She is considered one of Canada's leading experts in developing equity responsive organizations and her research and advocacy have pushed Canadian institutions to address anti-Black racism and the collection of race-based data.  

New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program

Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Nouman Ashraf is an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream within the Organizational Behavior area at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

He possesses a broad range of professional, academic and research interests, with a specialized focus on enabling inclusive and innovative practices within teams, organizations and boards. 

For the last decade and a half, he has held progressively senior roles at the University of Toronto, including most recently as the Director of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion the Rotman School of Management. 

He is a recognized thought leader in governance and has taught thousands of directors in the national Rotman program on Not-for-Profit Governance in partnership with the Institute for Corporate Directors since its inception in 2007.  

Nouman serves as Teaching Fellow at the Institute for Gender + the Economy. He is also an Associate at Trinity College within the University of Toronto and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the University of Toronto School of Cities, where he is the founder and Academic Director of the Leading Social Justice Collective. 

In his free time, Nouman mentors exceptional post-graduate students in his capacity as Senior Fellow Emeritus at Massey College within the University of Toronto. Most recently, he developed an online course on inclusive leadership in partnership with GetSmarter which launches in Fall 2023.

Stepping Stones Program, New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program

Staff Psychiatrist, Hospital for Sick Children
Associate Dean, Clinical Affairs & Professional Values
Temerty Faculty of Medicine
Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Dr. Pier Bryden has been a staff psychiatrist at the Hospital for Sick Children since 2001 and has subspecialty certification in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada. 

She is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean, Clinical Affairs & Professional Values, for the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Bryden is a graduate of the University of Toronto, University of Oxford, and McMaster University.

Her academic publications include papers on medical education, medical professionalism, and ethical and legal aspects of child psychiatry. She is the co-author, with Dr. David Goldbloom, of a popular book on psychiatry titled, “How Can I Help: A Week in my Life as a Psychiatrist,” and with Dr. Peter Szatmari of “Start Here: A Parent’s Guide to Helping Children and Teens Through Mental Health Challenges.”

Dr. Bryden was the 2018 Recipient of the University’s prestigious President’s Teaching Award, the 2020 Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Region 3 Mentor of the Year Award, and the 2021 Sarita Verma Award for Advocacy and Mentorship in Postgraduate Medicine at the University of Toronto.

New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program

Theme Lead, New & Evolving Academic Leaders Program, Centre for Faculty Development
Family Physician, Women's College Hospital Crossroads Refuge Clinic
Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Dr. Praseedha Janakiram is a family physician at Women’s College Hospital Crossroads Refugee Clinic, with additional practice interests in HIV primary care and women’s health. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at the University of Toronto. Praseedha is the current Faculty Lead for the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration in Family Medicine - a partnership supporting the launch and development of the first family medicine training program in Ethiopia over the past ten years. Praseedha has former clinical experience in Malawi, Pakistan, Nunavut, Yellowknife and Ethiopia and served as Acting Vice Chair Global Health and Social Accountability at the DFCM in 2019.  Praseedha has been recognized for her excellence in leadership, education and global health through numerous awards.

Reena Pattani is a staff physician and clinician educator in the Division of General Internal Medicine at St Michael’s Hospital and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She obtained her medical degree from McGill University and completed her residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto, where she was Chief Medical Resident in her final year of training. She completed a Master of Public Health at Harvard University as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. One of her scholarly focuses has been organizational effectiveness and workplace culture within healthcare. She currently serves as the Director of Learner Experience in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Education Practice Leader, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Robyn Davies is the Education Practice Leader for Physiotherapy services at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario and a lecturer and the co-coordinator of the Advanced Neuromuskuloskeletal Physical Therapy Unit at the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. She received her physiotherapy degree from McMaster University and in 1998 completed a Masters of Applied Science in Manipulative Physiotherapy at the University of South Australia. Her interests lie in the areas of manual therapy and education. Robyn is a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Manual Therapy and a recent graduate of the Education Scholars Program at the Centre for Faculty Development in the University of Toronto.

Director of Research, Allan Waters Family Simulation Centre
Professorship in Technology-Enabled Education, St. Michael’s Hospital
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Medicine, University of Toronto

Ryan Brydges conducts research in three related domains: (i) clarifying how healthcare trainees and professionals manage (through self-regulation) their life-long learning, (ii) understanding how to optimize the instructional design of healthcare simulation (and other technology-enhanced learning modalities) for training and assessment of healthcare professionals (iii) identifying best practices in the training and assessment for bedside invasive medical procedures (e.g., lumbar puncture, central line insertion, thoracentesis).

Through studies of self-regulation and simulation, Ryan aims to understand how training interventions translate into healthcare professional’s behaviours. Most specifically, his work with procedural skills will serve as a proof of concept for developing novel model of ‘competency-based education’ in both academic and community hospital settings. That research arm will have implications for patient care as well as health care system reform (e.g., identifying a need for specialized procedural service teams), and healthcare resource utilization (e.g., providing input to Choosing Wisely initiatives).

Ryan obtained his MSc and PhD from the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto. He then completed an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Glenn Regehr at the University of British Columbia.