From Manager to Leader (Winter 2025)

Facilitator

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Christina Tector draws on over 20 years of experience working in the federal public service in the fields of leadership and organizational change. She is passionate about facilitating, supporting and accompanying leaders to discover their own personal development edges, fulfill their potential and elevate the teams of people they lead. Christina cares deeply about creating a climate of trust, compassion and authenticity for healthy humans to thrive in healthy systems.

Christina delivers leadership programs through the Canada School of Public Service, the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Executive Programs & the Global Learning & Development Centre at the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). She works with teams to support them to strengthen both their relationships and their impact. Christina also coaches clients individually and in small groups, to help them re-discover their own sense of agency and inner guidance.

Christina is a lifelong learner. She is an Integral Associate Coach, a Qualified Mindfulness-Based Symptom Management teacher.  She is a certified Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i) Feedback Facilitator and Action Learning Group Facilitator. She holds a Masters of Education Degree in Counselling Psychology from McGill University.

Facilitator

Craig Szelestowski is a Lean government and transformation specialist with close to two decades of experience implementing dramatic turnarounds in Canadian government. He started Lean Agility Inc. in 2010 to apply Lean exclusively to government organizations. With his coaching, his clients have reduced lead times by up to 80%, increased capacity by up to 200% and created outstanding levels of employee engagement. 

In his public service career, as Vice President of Human Resources, Lean and Quality, he lead the Royal Canadian Mint’s Lean transformation which helped move the organization through a challenging era of cutbacks and job losses into an extended period of financial and organizational health and stability. During his tenure, the Mint realized tens of millions of dollars of Lean improvements, dramatically reduced the time and effort to deliver its products and services, moving from a financial loss, to a profit of over $68 million. In terms of employee engagement, it improved from 100 grievances per year to 20 per year and was named by Maclean’s magazine as one of “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” from 2007 to 2010. 

Over a period of the past sixteen years, Craig has introduced and/or applied Lean in over 60 projects in more than 25 public sector organizations in Canada.

He is widely regarded as one of Canada’s foremost experts on the application of Lean to both knowledge/project based work as well as to more transactional work such as permits and applications. An excellent speaker and facilitator, Craig has been called upon to share his expertise at numerous conferences across Canada, including: the 2018 Canadian Lean Summit (Results, Not Resistance: Building Buy-in and Execution into your Lean Initiative), the 2016 Conference Board of Canada Public Sector Transformation Conference (Taking a Lean Approach to Deliverology), the 2016 Ontario Public Service Lean Community of Practice Symposium (Banish the Backlog in Non-Transactional Processes), the 2016 Canadian Government Executive Annual Conference (Deliverology: Risks and Opportunities from a Lean Perspective) and the 2015 Canadian Government Executive Annual Conference (An introduction to Lean Government).  

Craig has served multiple times as a part-time professor at the Telfer School of Business at the University of Ottawa. He is currently the co-designer and instructor of Telfer’s White and Yellow Belt Lean Service programs and teaches Lean to Telfer’s MBA students.

Craig offers his services in both of Canada’s official languages; he served as the Mint’s Official Languages Co-Champion from 2004 to 2010.

Facilitator

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James Clemens is an accomplished leadership coach and project consultant specializing in organisational culture change. He has over two decades of professional experience in executive leadership development and organisational effectiveness. Prior to becoming a management consultant, James was a manager of executive leadership programs in the Public Service of Canada as well as a Senior Policy Advisor providing strategic advice to the most senior levels of government on enterprise-wide change initiatives. James has extensive international and multi-cultural experience developing, leading and coaching executives and project teams to produce unprecedented results.

Facilitator

Prior to retiring from the public service in 2020, Marie was a faculty member at the Canada School of Public Service and led the launch of a new Executive Leadership Development Program for senior public sector executives. 

Over the past 32 years, Marie has held various positions at Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Industry Canada and Finance Canada, where she provided strategic advice and managed a number of programs relating to energy, transportation, environmental and science policy.  Since 2007 she has held executive positions with responsibilities in leading transformational projects, corporate planning, business & vision process reviews and managing inter-departmental initiatives. Over the course of her career, she has launched several people-management & leadership development initiatives.

Marie is an accredited Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and holds a B.Sc., and an MBA from the University of Ottawa as well as a Certificate in change management from Queens University.

Facilitator

Paula Alphonse is a transformational speaker, personal leadership educator and a status quo disruptor.  She has traveled across the globe inspiring, mentoring and transforming men and women of all ages to reach out and capture their own leadership. Paula wants everyone to recognize the power within that is awaiting to be ignited along with their right to a blissful life.  She uses her 16-plus years’ experience in the management cadre, colorful storytelling, and a memorable sense of humor to provide tips, tools and structures which capitalize on opportunities at-hand. 

Though Paula has held many hats throughout my career: pharmacist, manager, coach, facilitator and author, her passion and purpose in life is to empower people to reach their full potential. She knows that we all have within ourselves the power to create positive impact and the best return on investment for ourselves, our families as well as the organization we work for.  

It is her not-so-secret mission to help individuals move from obscurity to self-realization so they can live their best lives to the fullest. Paula considers herself privileged to be able to see first-hand how helping each other grow actually makes the whole world a better place… one person at a time. 

Facilitator

Cathy Lewis is a co-founder, board director, professor, and consultant. She has worked in leadership roles across corporate, government and not-for-profit organizations. Her areas of expertise broadly include education, strategy, and governance.  

Cathy leads domestic and international education programs. Her education clients have included Microsoft, NASA’s Distance Learning, and Public Services and Procurement Canada. Cathy is a part-time professor in the Telfer School of Management’s Executive MBA where she teaches leadership, team skills, and emotional intelligence. In a manufacturing context Cathy has been the global lead for Environment, Health and Safety, Director of Communications, designed an Enterprise Strategic Program Management Office and created workplace apprenticeship, mentoring and coaching programs. Cathy has been a board member for 20 years and an area of expertise in her consulting practice is governance. 

Cathy volunteered on a Habitat Build team in Whitehorse, served as treasurer on the Elizabeth Fry Society board and supports the Ottawa School Breakfast Program. Cathy founded iSisters Technology Mentoring in 2001. iSisters creates and delivers technology programs in collaboration with community partners to equip women with the skills and confidence to participate fully in their community. She supports strategy, programs, and partnership development as a director on the board.