Our Team

Member biography…

Sarah Banquier has over 20 years experience as a consultant to clients in the healthcare and financial services sectors. She works with public and privately-held organizations to build outstanding executive teams and non-executive boards. Her clients include biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, together with leading financial institutions, across the US and Canada.

Sarah began her career in London, UK, and spend several years in the US before finding home in Canada. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School in New York, and a BA from Bristol University in the UK. Sarah lives in Toronto with her husband, three children and her Labradoodle, Millie.

Sherly joins the board of OHP as board treasurer as a seasoned financial analyst known for accuracy, attention to detail and timeliness in managing disbursement functions for diverse-industry employers. She has more than 10 years of financial experience in both profit and non-profit sectors.

Since 2017 she has overseen all aspects of Accounts Payable Administration at University of Toronto Schools and prior to that she worked as a financial analyst for E-Health Ontario. In addition to having a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting Sherly has proficiencies in Raisers Edge, Financial Edge, MS Office Suite, Great Plains, CMS, QuickBooks, Oracle, Orion-VCI, Wide Orbit, and Access.

Sherly is also the proud pawrent of an adorable maltese Snowie and knows first hand the therapeutic power of human-animal interactions. Sherly looks forward to working with One Health Partners to help support responsible fiscal management and sustainable growth.

Mary Macdonald recently retired as a special education teacher in the Toronto District School Board. She specialized in teaching students with complex physical disabilities and hearing loss. Her strengths include working on contributing to multi-disciplinary teams, overseeing program development and has significant experience advocating on behalf of students in both the educational and governmental fields.

Animals have always been an integral part of Mary’s life. Mary has had a lifelong commitment to supporting the well-being of animals that began at a young age when she was involved in rescuing and fostering a range of species in conjunction with the appropriate sanctuaries. Currently, Mary and one of their two dogs, have a lot of fun volunteering in the Animal Assisted Therapeutic Recreation Program that Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital runs in partnership with One Health Partners.

A moving example that illustrated the power of the human-animal bond in action happened when her father suffered a heart attack at age 97 and was recovering in the hospital. With the approval of the CEO, her father’s beloved little dog, Jenny was brought into the cardiac intensive care where her father announced that Jenny was the best medicine the cardiologists could have ordered! Mary’s deep appreciation of this magical bond was cemented as she witnessed the joyful and loving relationship between her elderly father and his cherished little dog who enriched his life until he was 103.

Mary holds an M.Ed. from Smith College, Massachusetts, an Ontario Teaching Certificate from OISE, U of T, and a B.A. from Queen’s University.

Kamila Gourdie is an entrepreneur and leader, based in Toronto. She is a multilingual corporate strategist and business development specialist who has lived and worked throughout Europe, North America and Asia.

She is a life-long pet guardian, and a strong believer in the value of human-animal synergies. Growing up in her native Poland, her grandparents owned a sustainable farm where she was always around horses and cattle. She learned from a young age the importance of caring, compassionate animal husbandry, and benefits of human-animal bonds.

Since 2004, Kamila has been President of Mondex Corporation, responsible for the management of the company in Canada, and its remote teams in Europe and other locations world-wide. Prior to this, she worked in a consulting capacity advising corporate clients on strategy and implementation, particularly for international operations.

A graduate of the University of Montreal, Dr. Kimberly-Ann Therrien moved her family from Canada and joined Banfield Pet Hospital in 2006 as an associate veterinarian. In 2008, she began her leadership journey within Banfield with her most recent promotion in 2017 to Vice President of Veterinary Quality. In this role, Dr. Therrien was responsible for ensuring high-quality medical care across 20 markets and 300+ hospitals within the Central and Midwest region. In 2021, Dr. Therrien accepted a new role as VP of Operations for the Southeast Region with BluePearl Specialty and Emergency.

Dr. Therrien is an active member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Kentucky Veterinary Medical Association, and Florida Veterinary Medical Association, and serves as a board member of the Banfield Foundation since 2016. At the start of 2020, she assumed the role of president of the Women Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative (WVLDI). Most recently, Dr Therrien has also joined the newly formed AVMA DEI Commission as a founding board member as well as One Health Partners as a board member. Her passion for leadership and the many challenges that veterinarians face within the profession is what first led her to join WVLDI, and she is committed to helping shape the future of veterinary medicine.

In her free time, Dr. Therrien loves spending time enjoying the great outdoors and traveling with her two daughters and husband.

Kathy Duncan has worked in the Animal Care, Control and Welfare field for 30 years. She has worked as an Animal Control Officer, Agent/Inspector and Manager in Operations and Investigations for Humane Societies, the Ontario SPCA, and municipalities.

She has been a member of the Municipal Law Enforcement Officer’s Association of Ontario for 17 years and a member of the Association of Animal Shelter Administrators of Ontario (AASAO) for over 25 years. Kathy has been a member of the board of directors with the AASAO for over 17 years, 12 of those she served as President/Chair of the Board.

Kathy has been actively involved in various provincial working groups including the Animal Welfare Task Force over the course of her career and is passionate about bringing improvements to animal sheltering and animal welfare whenever possible. Currently Kathy is the Director of National Program at Humane Canada.

For more than 20 years, Sylvia Quant has been leading and contributing to multiple quality improvement initiatives at local, regional and provincial levels. Most of her work has focused on enhancing integrated best practice care, quality care, and patient/family experiences.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Medical Science, a MSc degree in Rehabilitation Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. Within the last five years, she has also completed her Master’s degree in Health Quality at Queen’s University, the Canadian Patient Satefy Program with Healthcare Excellence Canada and CHA Learning, and a Master’s Certificate in Project Management at the Schulich School of Business.

She holds an adjunct appointment at the Department of Physical Therapy, at the University of Toronto, and is currently working as the Quality Improvement and Implementation Lead for the Myrna Daniels Seniors Emergency Medicine Centre at the University Health Network. Withinin this role, she has been working with multiple teams to optimize the quality of care for high-risk seniors within the Emergency Departments at Toronto Western Hospital and Toronto General Hospital.

With a holistic view of health quality, Sylvia is very passionate about optimizing the experiences of patients, families and teams, and looks forward to contributing to the development and support of One Health Partner priorities and projects.

Debbie hails from the rural town of Ayr, Ontario, where she raised her daughter with “all things feathered, finned, and furred,” and with her daughter now a zookeeper, she’s privy to the most intriguing behind-the-scenes tours – and feeding carrots to rhinos! Life never ceases to be wondrous with the deep and profound connection that we have with animals.

It was that connection that influenced her life’s work. Upon graduating from the Ontario Veterinary College, Debbie spent the first years of her career in general and emergency practice, upon which she founded a family-centered companion animal hospital in Kitchener, Ontario. With room in her heart for helping children as well as animals, she began fostering with Family and Children’s Services. Introduced to, and inspired by, an alternate helping profession, she returned to school to study social development studies, completing a Master of Social Work degree at Wilfrid Laurier University. As the first person in North America to be a veterinarian and social worker, she merged her expertise with a PhD at the University of Guelph.

Dr. Naila Kassam is a Family Physician located in Toronto. Naila completed her medical degree at the University of British Columbia, residency at Women’s College Hospital at the University of Toronto, and her MBA at the Richard Ivey School of Business. She has experience in healthcare consulting through her work with KPMG and Think Research.In addition to her business experience, Naila continues to enhance her current clinical practice through her work as an adjunct professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Western University and as a council member on the Member Interest Group Section of the College of Family Physicians of Canada.

Naila thoroughly enjoys volunteering in the community and has non-profit board experience with multiple organizations including ANOVA and the healthline.ca. She is the proud paw parent to Mulligan, a registered therapy dog with One Health Partners. Previously, she embarked on a pet therapy journey with her former rescue, Freddy, a blind senior. Naila is deeply passionate about leveraging the synergy of research, innovation and partnerships to improve pet therapy programs and healthcare outcomes.

Aarushi Puri is a lawyer licensed to practice in Ontario and currently Legal Counsel at Metergy Solutions (formerly, Enercare Connections), a portfolio company of Brookfield Infrastructure and one of North America’s leading sub-metering solutions providers. Curious, perceptive and analytical, Aarushi has robust Canadian and international transactional experience in private practice at Stikeman Elliott LLP in Toronto and Allen & Gledhill LLP in Singapore. Her practice focused on corporate and securities law, with a particular emphasis on cross-border mergers and acquisitions, financings, corporate governance, antitrust law as well as general corporate and commercial law.

She has advised on a wide range of corporate governance matters, including corporate social responsibility, executive compensation and shareholder activism and is currently co-authoring a book on directors duties and corporate governance lessons emerging out of COVID-19. While at law school, Aarushi worked with a number of legal clinics including the Investor Protection Clinic and the Community & Legal Aid Services Programme, which inspired her to give back to the community.

A strong advocate for the importance of the human-animal bond for our collective well-being (with first-hand experience with dogs), Aarushi is deeply passionate about enriching this bond as she strongly believes that animals, especially dogs and cats, can significantly alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression and ease loneliness; issues that have been exacerbated in our communities by the COVID-19 pandemic. Aarushi holds a Juris Doctor from Osgoode Hall Law School and a Bachelor of Social Science (Economics) from the National University of Singapore.