“If you work in health care, you work in mental health” MHA CEO-in-Residence Speaker Series with Sarah Downey
The Telfer School of Management was thrilled to welcome to our CEO-in-residence speaker series Sarah Downey, an alumna of the Master of Health Administration (MHA) program, who is president and CEO of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). She spent the day with MHA students and the Telfer community on May 30, 2024.
The MHA CEO-in-Residence Speaker Series gives the Telfer community an opportunity to hear from leaders about pressing issues in health care. Attendees gain insight into important dilemmas that affect us all, and also have opportunities to network and rally together to find solutions.
Current MHA students had the privilege of spending an extended lunch hour with Sarah, who spoke on the topic of “Becoming CEO”. She set up the talk as an interview and shared some interesting insights into what the search for a CEO is like and what kinds of experiences and qualifications a board might look for in a candidate. Students heard her pitch for the “top job”, which gave them an inside look into the kind of preparation involved in these kinds of interviews for potential CEOs. The students then had the opportunity to ask her a range of tough questions to determine if she was the best candidate for the position of president and CEO of CAMH. No surprise – she was! Students also learned more about how to make decisions in their own career paths by learning from Sarah’s experiences and journey.
During the afternoon session, Sarah addressed a broader segment of the Telfer community, including MHA and EMHA students, alumni and professors. Her presentation: “Mental Health is Health: How One Canadian Hospital Is Redefining Our Understanding of Mental Illness” was divided into three sections:
- The history of mental illness through the eyes of CAMH
- Why mental illness is the most important health issue of our lifetime
- What health care leaders can do
Attendees were presented with some grim facts about mental health and addiction, which served to highlight the essential nature of CAMH’s services. Sarah spoke about the cracks in our health-care system in terms of the co-occurrence of mental health issues with physical health issues. During the Q&A session, she encouraged leaders in health care to innovate, to advocate and to collaborate:
“Our [CAMH] vision, Health Redefined, is compelling and it continues to apply. We need to create a movement where every family, every workplace, every hospital has expertise and awareness in mental health. Every corner of our system needs to be excellent with respect to mental health and we really need people to think far more expansively about what health is. Some might say we need to think about healthy societies and move beyond the concept of healthy individuals.
Mental health is health
Housing is health
Equity is health
Truth and Reconciliation is health
Climate action is health
Education is health
To name a few ...”
Cutting-edge leadership and management are essential in maintaining and improving the quality of our health-care system. To learn more about how to become part of the solution and to translate your passion for health into action, take a look at Telfer’s health-related graduate and executive programs:
MHA program
EMHA program
Telfer Executive programs
This article was written by Nathalie Paré, an intermediate specialist in academic advising for graduate programs at the Telfer School of Management. In this role, she guides and supports MHA and EMHA students.
CAMH - Building Better Tomorrows with Bruce Kuwabara
CAMH - No One Left Behind Campaign