Donna Cansfield
Chair
Retired – formerly Ontario MPP and Chief Government Whip
Retired – formerly Ontario Liberal Party
Donna has spent much of her career within the education sector occupying numerous positions. From 1988-2003 she was the Trustee with the Etobicoke School Board and the Toronto District School Board. She has been a Member of the Metropolitan Toronto School Board, President of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association, President of the Canadian School Boards Association and Chair of the Toronto District School Board.
Donna has also been ingrained in provincial politics. From 2003 2014 Donna served as an elected Provincial Member of the Legislature Etobicoke Centre. She was appointed Parliamentary Assistant (PA) to the Energy Minister in 2003, and then became the Minister of Energy in 2005. She was reassigned as Minister of Transportation in 2006.
After the 2007 election, Cansfield became Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources, where she served until 18 January 2010, following which she was appointed as PA to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
In 2011, she was appointed as PA to the Minister of Economic Development and Innovation and in 2012 as PA to the Minister of Finance. In February 2013 as part of the Wynne government, she was appointed as chief government whip.
Within the health space, Donna has spent time as Palliative Care Volunteer Support, and currently serves on various Boards of charitable health non-profits.
Dan Markovich
Past Chair
Retired – formerly Associated Partner
Retired – formerly Aon Hewitt Investment Consulting
Prior to his retirement in 2014, Dan was an associate partner in the Investment Consulting practice at Aon Hewitt and supported clients in the greater Toronto area as well as in Eastern Ontario. After nearly 40 years in pension finance, investments and consulting, Dan proudly bears the scars from stagflation, currency crises, meltdowns, reckless conservatism and irrational exuberance. His clients included pension funds, endowments, insurers and special purpose funds in the corporate, university, municipal government and not-for-profit sectors.
Before joining Aon Hewitt in 2005, Dan had co-founded the independent pension advisory firm ARDAN Fund Oversight and has held executive positions with TD Asset Management and the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System. He has also lectured on investment theory and practice at Ryerson University.
Dan was previously a member of the Pension Investment Association of Canada. He is also a former Chair of the Association of Canadian Pension Management and its Ontario Regional Council. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in International Economics from the University of Windsor.
Now that he has retired, Dan aims to balance family activities with volunteering and checking off items on his bucket list. He is married to Pat, with whom he has three adult children and looks forward to spoiling a growing brood of grandchildren. Dan and Pat are avid wilderness paddlers and also have trekked extensively across northern Spain, Italy, the U.K., Galapagos Islands, Peru, Patagonia, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Ontario’s Algonquin Park and Bruce Trail.
J. Talbot Babineau, CFA
Vice Chair
President & CEO
IBV Capital
Talbot founded IBV Capital and is responsible for portfolio management and setting the firm’s strategic vision. Talbot has over a decade of value investing experience. In 2010, he was engaged by two highly successful Canadians to form and manage their Family Office. The Family Office experienced tremendous success under his management and, in 2014, Talbot founded IBV Capital and launched IBV Capital Global Value Fund.
Prior to forming the Family Office and founding IBV Capital, Talbot held various positions at institutional real estate firms where he was responsible for investment activities and strategic planning.
Talbot is a CFA Charterholder and earned an Honours Economics and Financial Management degree from Wilfrid Laurier University.
Laurene Cihosky
Past Chair
Senior Consultant
CustomerFirst Now
Laurene is a career CRM marketer and customer experience specialist, with 30 years expertise in leveraging customer data assets and market insights to optimize customer engagement, deliver product and market growth and maximize shareholder value.
Laurene has held executive roles with some of Canada’s leading advertising agencies, where she developed industry-leading programs to acquire and retain customers, built CRM methodologies and defined optimal customer/channel engagement strategies for her clients. More recently, she was a member of the executive team at Canada Post Corporation, where she defined the strategic direction and led the implementation of an organization-wide customer-centric transformation for the Direct Marketing Line of Business resulting in successive years of growth for this multi-billion dollar business unit. During this period, Laurene was awarded the Direct Marketer of the Year Award by the Direct Marketing Association in recognition of her efforts to improve the marketing industry’s experience with Canada Post.
Laurene is currently Principal CX Consultant leading a variety of customer experience engagements for globally recognized brands in healthcare, insurance, retail and manufacturing industries.
Laurene joined the Lung Health Foundation board of directors in 2015 and currently chairs both the Marketing and Strategic Directions Committees.
Michael George Warden, BA (Hons), CPA
Treasurer
Secretary/Treasurer
Warjon Inc.
Michael is a Chartered Accountant, retired from public practise. He has also been involved in the private sector in numerous business ventures and continues to be active today. He has served the Lung Health Foundation in numerous capacities, including board chair, since the early 1080’s.
He has been active in his local community of Cornwall, serving on many volunteer boards and causes. He led his local hospital board, as chair, through the province wide restructuring and was elected as the first board chair of the new consolidated hospital system for the area.
Dawn Bowdish, PhD
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity
McMaster University
Dr. Dawn Bowdish is a Professor at McMaster University and a Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity. Dr. Bowdish investigates the changes in the aging immune system that make older adults vulnerable to pneumonia and how the microbes that naturally live on us keep dangerous pathogens at bay. Her research team aims to discover novel treatments to protect older adults from infection by improving their immune systems and harnessing the power of the microbes that live on and in us (“the microbiome”).
Christina McMillan Boyles, RN, MScN, PhD
Assistant Professor School of Nursing
Laurentian University
Christina is a Registered Nurse and an Assistant Professor in the School of Nursing and Allied Health Professions at Laurentian University. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Health in the School of Rural and Northern Health at Laurentian University. Over the course of her career, she has developed and refined her research and scholarly focus at both the graduate and doctoral levels in the area of health service utilization, health policy, health equity, and COPD.
Christina is a long-standing member of the Ontario Respiratory Care Society (ORCS) and has served in many capacities across many committees. She is a member of the Lung Health Foundation Board. She is also a member of the Canadian Thoracic Society (CTS), Canadian Respiratory Health Professionals (CRHP), the Canadian Association of Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR), the Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL), the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO), and the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO).
She has also contributed to the Registered Nurses Association (RNAO) Best Practice Guideline Project for COPD.
Her professional, research and scholarly interests include health leadership, health service administration and quality improvement, nursing leadership, health services and policy research, health equity, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, qualitative research methods, and nursing education.
Emmanuel Binaday
Partner & Director
Forbes Capital & Treasury Advisor Inc.
Manny Binaday is the founder and principal consultant of EJB Business Consultant. Manny specializes in assisting small and medium sized enterprises in arranging and negotiating senior debt financing and treasury / cash management solutions. Manny also has a real estate development company in Coron, Palawan, Philippines where he built the Rapsa Nui food park in a tourist area of the islands.
Manny was a long time commercial banker with several of the Canadian banks in the GTA where he supported a team of commercial bankers in Peel Region and Toronto. In one of his roles, he managed a portfolio of high value not-for-profit and charitable organizations where he volunteered his time as a photographer with several of the clients for many charitable events.
John Guest, BA, Management Certificate
Retired – formerly Director of Marketing & Sales
Retired – formerly PNI Digital Media
John is a retired marketing and sales executive with thirty years of experience profitably managing diverse traditional and digital lines of businesses and cross-functional teams. Having successfully worked for and with some of the world’s most recognized retail brands he is adept at driving innovation and effectively managing change in dynamic business environments.
John has previous board experience having sat on the Board of Directors for WestPark Healthcare Centre for eight years and is currently a board member for Music Care which trains healthcare and support workers how to leverage music in ongoing care environments. John joined the marketing council for the Lung Health Foundation in 2020. He now is Chair of the marketing council and in the Spring of 2024 became a member of the Lung Health Foundation Board of Directors.
Ruby Philip Katyal
Team Lead, Contracts & Agency Group
Ministry of the Attorney General
Ruby is a senior commercial lawyer with the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General. She is an experienced director in the health and research sectors with expertise in governance, diversity and inclusion. She is also a registered nurse with pre and post operative surgical experience.
Keely Renee Cameron, LLB, GEeMBA
Partner
Bennett Jones LLP
Keely is a commercial litigator. She has spent much of her career as legal counsel, representing a regulatory board and in her current role advises corporate boards. She has experience as a director through her involvement with Calgary Greeters and Breast Cancer Supportive Care. She first became involved with the Lung Health Foundation through the governance committee. Keely is currently completing the Directors Education Program.
Sarah MacIsaac, MD, FRCPC
Staff Respirologist and Assistant Professor
Dalhousie University
Dr. Sarah MacIsaac is a staff respirologist and assistant professor at Dalhousie University with a focus on interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. She completed her undergraduate degree in Connecticut, her medical school at McMaster, her internal medicine and respirology training at McGill and her interstitial lung disease fellowship and Pulmonary Hypertension fellowships at McMaster and the Centre de Référence de l’hypertension pulmonaire at Université Paris Saclay. Her areas of interest include interstitial lung diseases, pulmonary hypertension, lung cancer treatment modalities in patients with interstitial lung disease, and reducing barriers to care for patients- specifically those who identify as LGBTQ2S+.