15 Workplace Wellbeing Leaders for Ontario Teams

Last updated: August 2026

Workplace wellbeing leaders for Ontario teams include researchers, public-system executives, clinicians, programme builders and practical educators. As of August 2026, these 15 people offer useful ways to think about psychological health and safety, burnout, work design, recovery, trust and the everyday conditions that help people do good work.

This is not a claim that one kind of expertise solves every wellbeing problem. Ontario workplaces range from hospitals and schools to public services, professional firms and industrial settings. The value of this directory is the range: it helps a leader find the right kind of thinking for the question in front of the team.

The names are presented alphabetically by surname for easy navigation. Some are based in Ontario, while others lead Canada-wide work that is directly available or relevant to Ontario employers.

Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters

Workplace wellbeing is the quality of the conditions people meet when they do their jobs. It includes physical safety, psychological health and safety, workload, support, trust, recovery, inclusion and the ability to speak honestly about what is making work harder than it needs to be.

That wider view matters because a fruit bowl, app or one-off seminar cannot repair unclear priorities, chronic overload or a manager who makes it unsafe to raise a concern. Personal supports still matter, but leaders also need to examine job design, team habits and the systems around work.

I use a simple test: can people name what good looks like, raise a risk early and see who owns the next action? When those conditions are missing, wellbeing becomes another private burden for the employee. When they are present, support becomes part of how work gets done.

1. Anne Tennier

President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety

Anne Tennier leads the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety from Hamilton. The centre's mandate connects physical safety with the psychological and mental health of workers, which makes Tennier's work directly useful to Ontario employers building a broader view of wellbeing.

Under Tennier's leadership, CCOHS has continued to produce practical workplace tools and national guidance. Its 2024 to 2025 annual report also records new resources and partnerships spanning safety and mental health, showing how public infrastructure can turn complex requirements into help that employers can actually use.

2. Mary Ann Baynton

Psychological Health and Safety Advisor, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health

Mary Ann Baynton is the Psychological Health and Safety Advisor to Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, Canada Life and participating employers. The national remit matters for Ontario teams because the free tools are designed to help workplaces act on psychological health and safety, conflict and performance concerns.

Baynton has helped shape practical resources around Canada's workplace psychological health and safety standard. Her account of developing the standard shows the value of bringing employers, government, researchers and practitioners into one workable process instead of treating wellbeing as a stand-alone campaign.

3. Bill Howatt

Chief Mental Health Officer and Founder, Howatt HR Consulting

Bill Howatt is Chief Mental Health Officer and founder of Howatt HR Consulting. His work focuses on reducing mental harm, strengthening psychological health and safety, and helping leaders build the practical capacity to support people at work across Canada.

Ontario employers can see that approach in the Mental Harm Prevention Roadmap, created with Workplace Safety and Prevention Services. The roadmap shifts attention from isolated wellness activities towards systems, leadership practices and support that reduce preventable harm before a worker reaches crisis.

4. Patricia Clausen

Interim Vice President, Health, Safety and Wellbeing, PSHSA

Patricia Clausen is Interim Vice President of Health, Safety and Wellbeing at the Public Services Health and Safety Association. Clausen leads practical services for Ontario's public sectors, where wellbeing must work alongside safety, operational pressure and public accountability.

PSHSA's current workplace wellbeing programme brings together psychological health and safety, supportive leadership, healthy team dynamics and physical safety. Clausen's role is valuable because it sits at the point where provincial systems, workplace advisers and day-to-day leaders need to turn those ideas into repeatable practice.

5. Donna Ferguson

Clinical Leader, Work Stress and Health Program, CAMH

Donna Ferguson is clinical leader in CAMH's Work Stress and Health Program and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. Her work connects trauma recovery, mood disorders and workplace mental health with the practical challenge of helping people return to meaningful work.

Ferguson also helped develop CAMH's Workplace Mental Health Playbook for Business Leaders. That contribution matters because it gives senior leaders a clearer role in prevention, early support and psychologically safer working conditions, rather than leaving every difficult issue to an individual employee or a benefits programme.

6. Monique Gignac

Scientific Director and Senior Scientist, Institute for Work and Health

Monique Gignac is Scientific Director and Senior Scientist at Toronto's Institute for Work and Health. Her research examines how stress, communication, privacy, support and accommodation shape working life for people living with chronic and episodic health conditions.

Gignac's team developed the Job Demands and Accommodation Planning Tool, recognised with an inclusive design award. The work gives employers and workers a more concrete way to discuss job demands and support needs, which is especially useful when a condition changes over time and a one-size policy cannot capture what good support looks like.

7. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe

Workplace Wellbeing and Resiliency Expert

Robyne Hanley-Dafoe is a workplace wellbeing and resiliency expert who turns research on stress and human behaviour into practical tools for teams. Her focus is not on asking people to ignore pressure, but on helping them work with clearer habits for recovery, connection and sustainable performance.

Her current work includes a structured Day in Quarters approach built around contribution, recovery, connection and integration. That framework is useful for Ontario leaders because it makes wellbeing visible in the shape of a day, instead of leaving it as a vague promise that competes with every urgent task.

8. Linda Duxbury

Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, Management, Carleton University

Linda Duxbury is a Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor in Management at Carleton University in Ottawa. For more than two decades, her applied research has focused on work-life balance, employee wellbeing, overload and the workplace conditions that support or drain people.

Duxbury's work reaches employers and policy makers, not only academic readers. Her Carleton expert profile connects employee wellbeing with management support, work environment, email use and changing patterns of work, giving leaders a wider lens on why personal coping tools cannot fix a poorly designed job.

9. Jill Magis

Program Manager, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health

Jill Magis is Program Manager at Workplace Strategies for Mental Health. Magis helps keep a national collection of practical workplace mental health and psychological safety resources accessible to organisations across Canada, including Ontario teams.

The library is designed for use, with adaptable workshops, assessments and guidance rather than awareness alone. Magis's role is a useful reminder that workplace wellbeing depends on steady programme stewardship: resources need to stay current, clear and easy enough for a manager or health and safety committee to pick up and apply.

10. Jennifer Moss

Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Global Wellbeing Group

Jennifer Moss is Chief Research and Strategy Officer at the Global Wellbeing Group. Her work helps leaders understand, measure and prevent workplace burnout, with a strong emphasis on organisational conditions rather than blaming exhausted people for failing to cope better.

Through her advisory work, Moss combines organisational health measurement with data-informed strategy. That approach is useful for Ontario teams because it asks leaders to diagnose workload, culture and management practices before choosing an intervention, making wellbeing a business design question as well as a personal health question.

11. Jim Moss

Co-Founder, Work Better Institute

Jim Moss is co-founder of the Work Better Institute and works on relational trust, leadership and community wellbeing. His focus on caring, careful and careless leadership gives teams plain language for the daily behaviour that either strengthens or weakens trust.

Moss's contribution is particularly relevant when organisations treat wellbeing as a programme separate from how leaders make decisions. His work links healthy culture with consistency, care and the quality of everyday relationships, helping Ontario teams examine what people actually experience instead of relying only on stated values.

12. Camille Quenneville

Chief Executive Officer, CMHA Ontario

Camille Quenneville is Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ontario Division. The division supports a province-wide branch network and connects mental health policy, programmes and community services across Ontario.

CMHA Ontario is also home to Mental Health Works, a national social enterprise that delivers workplace mental health training. Quenneville's leadership matters to employers because it connects the workplace conversation with the wider mental health system, including the realities people carry into work and the support available beyond it.

13. Paula Allen

Global Leader and Senior Vice President, Research and Client Insights, TELUS Health

Paula Allen is Global Leader and Senior Vice President of Research and Client Insights at TELUS Health. Allen leads research and data work that helps employers understand mental health, wellbeing, disability and the changing needs of working people.

Allen also leads the TELUS Mental Health Index, which gives employers recurring insight into workforce mental health. The useful lesson for Ontario teams is that measurement should create clarity for action, not become another score that leaders collect without changing the work.

14. Peter Smith

President and Senior Scientist, Institute for Work and Health

Peter Smith is President and Senior Scientist at Toronto's Institute for Work and Health. His research asks how working conditions affect health across different groups, including younger and older workers, newcomers and people managing chronic illness.

In 2026, Smith presented work on systems for preventing and managing work-related psychological injuries in Canada and Australia. That systems view is valuable for Ontario employers because it moves the question beyond individual resilience and towards the policies, job conditions and return-to-work practices that shape whether people stay well.

15. Henrietta Van Hulle

Interim Chief Executive Officer, PSHSA

Henrietta Van Hulle is Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Public Services Health and Safety Association. With a background in frontline nursing and workplace safety, Van Hulle leads an Ontario organisation that supports healthcare, education, government, municipal and public safety workplaces.

Before taking the interim chief executive role, Van Hulle led cross-sector work in health, safety and wellbeing. PSHSA's current wellbeing guidance reflects that joined-up approach, treating psychological safety, supportive leadership, communication and physical safety as connected parts of a sustainable workplace.

What These Leaders Show Us About Workplace Wellbeing

The strongest pattern across this group is that wellbeing is built through work, not added beside it. Researchers such as Linda Duxbury, Monique Gignac and Peter Smith examine workload, accommodation and working conditions. Public-system leaders such as Anne Tennier, Henrietta Van Hulle and Patricia Clausen turn those concerns into tools, standards and services.

The second pattern is that support needs both human skill and organisational structure. Donna Ferguson's clinical work matters when someone is already struggling. Mary Ann Baynton, Jill Magis and Bill Howatt focus on the practical systems that help leaders prevent harm, respond earlier and handle difficult conversations more safely.

The third pattern is clarity. Paula Allen and Jennifer Moss use data to help leaders see what is happening. Jim Moss and Robyne Hanley-Dafoe make trust, recovery and daily behaviour easier to discuss. Camille Quenneville connects workplace action with the wider mental health system.

How to Use This List

Start with the problem, not the most famous name. If the issue is chronic workload or poor work-life fit, begin with the researchers. If the team needs a psychological health and safety process, look at the public tools and national resources. If someone is already unwell, use qualified clinical and employee support pathways.

Next, choose one idea that changes a real decision or behaviour. You might clarify workload trade-offs, train managers to respond earlier, review accommodation practices or add psychological hazards to the health and safety conversation. A small operating change is more useful than a large wellbeing promise that nobody owns.

For structured learning, explore these employee wellbeing workshops. Keep the next move written, visible and small enough to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is workplace wellbeing?

Workplace wellbeing is the set of conditions that supports people to feel safe, healthy, valued and able to contribute. It includes physical and psychological safety, workload, relationships, inclusion, support and recovery. It is broader than personal wellness activities because the design and management of work affect how people experience the job.

Are all these leaders based in Ontario?

No. Several are based in Ontario, while others lead Canada-wide research, services or programmes that are directly relevant to Ontario teams. The title says they are for Ontario teams, not that every person lives in the province.

Where should an Ontario employer start?

Start by naming the specific pressure or risk. Then use the most relevant source: public guidance for systems, research for diagnosis, qualified clinical support for treatment, or practical leadership tools for daily habits. Avoid buying a solution before the team understands the problem.

Is workplace wellbeing the same as workplace mental health?

Workplace mental health is a central part of workplace wellbeing, but wellbeing also includes physical safety, relationships, workload, inclusion and how the job is designed. A complete approach connects these areas instead of treating mental health as a separate campaign.

How can leaders make wellbeing practical?

Make ownership visible. Choose one behaviour, policy or work condition to change, name one owner and set a written review point. Clear expectations, early conversations and manageable workload trade-offs usually create more value than a broad promise with no operating change behind it.

Conclusion

Ontario teams do not need one perfect wellbeing model. They need good evidence, practical tools and the discipline to match the response to the real problem. These 15 leaders offer different parts of that picture, from work design and public guidance to clinical recovery, research, trust and day-to-day leadership.

The most useful next move is to pick one current pressure and follow it back to the work. Is the issue workload, unclear expectations, weak manager skill, unsafe behaviour, poor accommodation or missing support? Name it clearly, then use the relevant person or organisation above to deepen the team's thinking.

Practical beats performative. One change that makes work safer or clearer on Monday morning is a stronger start than another wellbeing message that asks employees to carry the whole load themselves.

Related Reading

Explore corporate wellness workshops, mental health thought leaders and team culture thought leaders.

If your Ontario leadership team wants a practical session on building a healthier team culture, I can help you turn the ideas into clearer work, stronger conversations and actions people can use on Monday morning. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Brisbane-based leadership consultant, keynote speaker and Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and the author of Step Up or Step Out. He works with schools, corporates and nonprofits around the world. To enquire about a keynote, workshop or facilitated leadership session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.