John Martin
Partner, Mercantile Capital Inc., Principal, Top Shelf Solutions
John acquired a wealth of experience as a business advisor. He was a founding partner of a Mississauga, Ontario-based consulting firm that offered a full range of business advisory services to local, mid-market, private and public companies. John led the firm’s practice in the area of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions.
John left the firm in 2012 when it merged with one of Canada’s largest accounting and consulting firms.
During the course of his career, John has been seconded to fill executive roles for clients on both an interim and transition basis. Through this activity, John has gained an abundance of operating, transaction and restructuring experience across a variety of industries including natural resources, real estate development and manufacturing. Most recently, John has been active in the real estate development sector.
John graduated from the University of Western Ontario and in addition to his business advisory practice and his involvement with the Lung Health Foundation serves as a volunteer board member for other not-for-profit organizations.
Bruce Cooke
Past-Chair
Market Manager of the Greater Toronto Area for Dignity Memorial Funeral Providers
He has been a licensed funeral director for thirty years and has vast experience in assisting bereaved families.
Bruce’s passion for celebrating life with creativity has made a difference for family’s at the most difficult time of their lives.
Bruce believes in giving back to the community and has been a long standing member of the Rotary Club. Bruce has been recognized for his outstanding service as Rotarian of the Year as well as United Way Volunteer of the Year. Bruce is also the recipient of Dignity Memorial’s prestigious “Living the Brand” and “Managing for Excellence” awards recognizing service excellence.
Bruce has attended many provincial and national events as keynote speaker for SCI and he continues to be invited as to Humber College annually as a guest lecturer and motivational speaker on the many ways to celebrate and personalize funerals.
Bruce is the Past-Chair of the Lung Health Foundation and has spent the last 20 years in various roles both locally as well as provincially. Bruce has a deep rooted commitment to lung health and has a strong relationship with the OTS as well as the ORCS.
“It has been an honour and privilege to serve in the many capacities in my tenure with the Lung Health Foundation. I have met wonderful people that volunteer, who are on staff and who have stood beside me on executive all very committed to Lung Health in the Province of Ontario and across Canada. Our combined efforts helped pass the Lung Health Act and the establishment of The Ontario Lung Health Advisory Council. The power of committed, passionate people has and will continue to have Ontario “Breathing as One”!”
Laurene Cihosky
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.
Miriam Freymond Turnbull
MBA, RRT, Vice President & General Manager, ProResp Inc.
She started her career working in acute care where she gained a breadth of clinical experience and moved from there into community care where she started her career path of leadership. She has an extensive and successful background in local, regional, and senior executive leadership with ProResp.
While leading the local team, she completed an MBA from Wilfred Laurier University, complementing her clinical education and experience with business acumen. Miriam enjoys working with people and is keenly aware of the fact that as a leader she is as good as the team she works with, and she enjoys the opportunity to work and network with the broad team across the health system.
Miriam is passionate about making measurable difference in the respiratory health of Ontarians and is keenly aware of the importance of enabling individuals to receive their care where they wish – their wish is often to be at Home.
Dr. Dawn Bowdish
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”).
Donna Cansfield
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
Dan has served on the Board of the Lung Health Foundation since 2014 and on the Finance Committee since 2013. Prior to his retirement in 2014, Dan spent nearly 40 years in pension finance, investments and consulting, holding leadership positions with the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, TD Asset Management, ARDAN Fund Oversight and Aon Investment Consulting. He has also taught investment theory and practice at Ryerson University.
Dan was previously a member of the Pension Investment Association of Canada, is a former Chair of the Association of Canadian Pension Management and its Ontario Regional Council and currently serves as a volunteer/director with the Frontenac Arch Biosphere Foundation, United Church of Canada Treasury Investment Committee, St. John’s United Church (Brockville) and is a former director of the Canadian Lung Association. He holds BA and MA degrees in Economics from the University of Windsor. He is married to Patricia, with whom he has three children and enjoys spoiling a growing brood of grandchildren.
Michael Warden
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.
Scott McLauchlan
Scott is a passionate team member whose dynamic professional career includes record-setting Sales & Marketing roles with prominent Sports & Entertainment enterprises, creating communications and breakthrough promotions for private companies and charitable organizations, and significant not-for-profit elected and volunteer governance experience.
Since 2015, Scott has actively advocated for lung health with the Lung Health Foundation as a Provincial Marketing Council member. Prior to that, he served on the Board of Trustees of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board representing Brampton East. Scott currently volunteers on the Board of Directors of Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board’s ‘St. Andre Bessette Trust Fund’ which provides financial support to student families in need.
Scott and his wife, Cindy Taylor, reside in St. Marys where they operate an award-winning guest house and successful micro-bakery.
Leonora Girgenti
Creative Director
Girgenti Custom Window Treatments
Prior to entering the design industry, Leonora’s career was focussed in the Training & Development field. She has built relationships with organizations to assist them in identifying skill and performance gaps and to provide them with an innovative solution to learning and development opportunities.
Leonora’s role in the non-for-profit sector included the development and implementation of leadership programs for youth and teaching in-school programs to help students learn
new life skills.
Leonora continues to be very active as a volunteer within her community that has been inspired by her children’s activities along with lung health by managing teams and committees and organizing several fundraising events for charitable causes.
