Public Sector Leaders Program (Winter 2025)

Program Director

As a former Vice President in the Public Service of Canada and with more than 20 years in the executive rank, Patricia has extensive experience and honed competencies in several areas including conflict management, leadership development, values & ethics, employee and organizational effectiveness and well-being, as well as in transformational initiatives related to organizational culture. She now works with various clients as a trained professional coach and consultant, and shares her passion for people and their growth.

Over the course of her 34-year career, Patricia created and implemented brand-new people-centered programs and services – she was Health Canada’s first Ombuds in the early 2000’s – and she worked on Public Service-wide HR policies and guidance as VP, Policy and Communications, at the Public Service Commission from 2017 to 2021. Patricia occupied the position of Deputy Secretary to the Governor General from 2011 to 2017, which allowed her to work on national and international matters.  When she worked at the Canada School of Public Service, she was responsible for leadership development programs. The various positions she held in several departments allowed her to acquire considerable experience and expertise in dealing with a range of complex and sensitive people issues.

In addition to her university degree, Patricia obtained a University Certificate in Organizational Values and Ethics from Carleton University. She completed  ICF recognized coaching training and received training by the International Ombuds Association to serve as ombuds. She also possesses Certification in Creating Positive Change.

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.

Executive in Residence

Ingrid Richter is an Executive in Residence at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa and Partner, Threshold Associates.  Her teaching, action research and consulting work has three major areas of focus:  leadership development, facilitating complex, multi-stakeholder change processes and developing change agents so that they can more effectively engage in high impact, complex change.  Her recent client work focuses on leadership and international capacity development supporting sustainability of social innovation initiatives. She has in-depth experience in provincial and federal governments, including as a Senior Fellow at the Canada School of Public Service as well as senior roles in corrections, policing and public safety.  Ingrid was the co-founder of the Canadian Organization Development Institute and designs and delivers leadership programs for the UN Staff College and the UNHCR.  In her spare time she is an active volunteer at Synapcity, (an Ottawa non-profit focused on developing citizen engagement), loves travel, poetry, cooking and learning to play the ukulele.

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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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.