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.

EDI Director, Faculty of Music
University of Toronto

Reshma is a social worker and educator whose work focuses on the enhancement of individual, communal, and institutional equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) as well as harm/violence reduction and prevention. Prior to joining the Faculty of Music as its inaugural EDI Director in 2023, she was with the University of Toronto St. George Campus Accessibility Services for more than six years. During her time within that office, she supported thousands of students as an Accessibility Advisor, led a large team of Accessibility Advisors as they accommodated students, and served as Chair of the office’s first EDI Committee. She also co-created a workshop with the University’s AODA Officer on Language, Access, and Inclusion that has been delivered across the tri-campus to over 1000 participants. In 2021, she received the Jill Matus Excellence in Student Services award. She is actively involved in governance, serving on the U of T University Affairs Board for two years, the board of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations since 2014, and the Leonard Foundation since 2020.

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.

Staff Psychiatrist, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

Sacha Agrawal's clinical and teaching practice is focused on the provision of recovery-oriented, person-centred mental health services. He has designed, led and researched collaborations with service users that aim to disrupt and transform health professional education.

CFD Program Faculty: Stepping Stones

Samantha Chang is the Faculty Liaison, Anti-Racist Pedagogies at the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation and a Course Instructor at the Department of Art History, University of Toronto. Samantha's teaching practice integrates critical and inclusive pedagogies, accessible design, and the Universal Design for Learning framework. In 2021, Samantha received the U of T Course Instructor Teaching Excellence Award and was shortlisted for the BIPOC Teaching Excellence Award in 2023. Samantha currently serves as a Co-Chair of the Council of Ontario Educational Developers (COED) and the Vice Chair of the Teaching Assistant and Graduate Student Advancement (TAGSA) in the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE).

Coming soon!

Education Research Fellow, Wilson Centre for Research in Education
PhD student, Health Professions Education Research (HPER), University of Toronto 

Sanne Kaas-Mason is an interprofessional educator whose research interests focus on the various ways that healthcare practitioners engage in interdependent work. She is interested in the spectrum of relatively stable or fluid ways that constellations of collaboration show up across healthcare spaces, and how these impact the delivery of care. This includes interprofessional ways of collaborating. She also explores how entrenched distributions of power, along with siloed understandings of illness and care, might influence collaborative practices of healthcare practitioners.

Scientist, The Wilson Centre
Research Scientist, Michael Garron Hospital, Toronto East Health Network
Assistant Professor, Department of Family & Community Medicine, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Dr. Sarah Wright’s research program explores the (un)intended consequences of educational action that occurs in the intersections between assessment theory and practice. Her work is inspired and informed by a decade of experience as a psychometrician at Newcastle University Medical School (UK).  This practical experience has given her insight into how assessment frameworks can limit or support educational goals such as fostering compassionate practitioners or striving for social change. For example, she has combined psychometric and critical approaches to investigate the ways in which admissions policies often work to favour culturally and socially privileged medical students, thereby limiting attempts to improve student diversity. Through improved understanding of how emerging education goals transpire within existing education structures, her research seeks to improve education practice.