High-performing leaders are people first. Integrated well-being and therapeutic support to help you feel and perform your best.

M.S.W., RP, RSW, RMFT-S

Clinical Director

Melisse is the Institute's Clinic Director and the therapist senior leaders turn to when the stakes are high.

With decades of practice behind her, she specializes in work with C-suite clients — CAOs, CEOs, founders, and senior executives whose decisions move organizations and whose personal bandwidth rarely gets the same attention as their P&L.

Sessions with Melisse are sharp, candid conversations with someone who can meet your pace, pattern-match quickly, and go directly to what's actually in the way-executive burnout, decision fatigue, the isolation of the top seat, high-stakes board dynamics, and the relationships that tend to strain under a demanding career.

As our Clinical Supervisor, she also sets the standard of care across the Anchor Ascend team.

Her approach is integrative, evidence-based, and confidential to the bone. Grounded, direct, and refreshingly human, Melisse works shoulder-to-shoulder with leaders who are ready to do the real work, and isn't afraid to bring humour while you're doing it.

 MSW RSW, SEP, RYT 200

Registered Social Worker

 The majority of my career I’ve led teams through healthcare innovation and transformation as a senior leader. 

I’ve learned there’s no one-size-fits-all. Humans are complex and so are the systems we work within. I offer an integrative approach that adapts to each leader and works from and within their unique perspective and contextual experience.

The official line: I’m a clinical social worker and psychotherapist. In my part-time, I’m an international yoga teacher leading retreats. 

I am innately curious and have spent the last 4 years becoming a somatic experience practitioner.  I’ve taught college-level courses in Health, Management and Strategy, and I’ve spent two decades studying sports performance, leadership and human behaviour.

 My sweet spot is helping leaders shift teams into a performance mindset with a sports psychology focus.

The bottom line:   I am a straight shooter bringing a balance of compassion and curiosity

My intention is for leaders to feel less alone, full of possibility and part of the solution. My current mantra is "Courage over comfort".  

 BHSc, BSW, MHM, RSW 

Registered Social Worker

Most therapists have never held the weight of an organization's day-to-day operations, trials and tribulations as a senior leader, let alone a hospital. 

Heather has. 

With over two decades in healthcare, she has led healthcare systems she now helps her clients navigate their unique paths.

Her trajectory gives Heather a dual fluency most clinicians don't have. She understands the therapy space and the boardroom. She knows the weight a staff complaint carries, and she knows the weight of deciding what to do about it. 

She has lived the ethics, the optics, and the real human cost of leading inside complex, regulated organizations.

Her clinical work reflects her experience. 

Heather is calm, incisive, and allergic to performative leadership language. 

She works comfortably with executives navigating burnout, board pressure, moral distress, privacy and risk exposure, organizational change, and the quiet reckoning that tends to surface after years of being "the one who holds it together."

BA, MACP, RP(q)

Registered Psychotherapist

Adriana is the therapist built for leaders. A Psychotherapist with nearly two decades of progressively senior leadership experience behind her clinical work, she brings something rare to the room — a real, lived understanding of what it takes to hold responsibility, lead teams, and make the high-impact decisions.

Her work with adults is direct, collaborative, and calibrated for people with real bandwidth constraints. Sessions move. Adriana can sit with complexity without needing to tidy it up, and she knows how to translate insight into action in lives where "thinking about it more" isn't enough.

She also instructs at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and serves as a senior facilitator, training professionals who work in some of the most demanding support environments, which means her clinical perspective stays sharpened by the field, not just the textbook.

Adriana holds an MA in Counselling Psychology and pursues ongoing advanced training in equity, cultural and linguistic safety, and governance.

For senior leaders who want a therapist who respects their intelligence, their calendar, and the weight they carry, Adriana is an exceptional fit.

 BA, RP

Registered Psychotherapist

Tami provides depth-oriented, culturally responsive therapy. 

Trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, she works with high-functioning professionals navigating identity, major life transitions, and questions of meaning, experiences that can surface as burnout, anxiety, relationship difficulties, or depression.

Her work goes beyond symptom relief, focusing on what's happening beneath the surface: the patterns, history, and relational dynamics that shape how her clients see themselves and move through the world. She pays particular attention to cultural, intergenerational, and systemic influences, recognizing that context is inseparable from the work clients do in therapy.

Before becoming a therapist, Tami spent 20 years in public affairs and communications supporting health system leaders. That background gives her a grounded, firsthand understanding of professional pressure, complex organizational dynamics, and the challenge of maintaining inner life while meeting relentless external demands.

Tami brings lived experience of anxiety, depression, and postpartum mental health challenges to her clinical work. This has deepened both her empathy and clinical insight. 

Having also lived across multiple countries, she developed a deep sensitivity to culture, identity, and belonging. She welcomes conversations about spirituality and meaning when these are relevant to her clients.

Tami also volunteers as a support group facilitator and shares mental health content through LinkedIn and other platforms to reduce stigma and increase awareness.

 ND, MSCP

Naturopathic Doctor, Menopause Society Certified Practitioner

Dr. Erin TeWinkel is a Naturopathic Doctor who works with high-performing professionals and leaders whose health forms the foundation of their performance. She partners with people who've optimized everything else in their lives and are ready to bring that same rigor to their body: how they age, how they recover, how they sustain the energy and clarity that demanding work requires.  

Erin is also a Menopause Society Certified Practitioner whose passion is helps high-achieving women stop white-knuckling through burnout, perimenopause, and metabolic decline, and start building bodies and lives that can actually sustain their ambition. 

Her clinical focus is on hormone health, metabolic health, and longevity, blending rigorous, evidence-based care with honest, no-fluff guidance that respects a packed calendar and a low tolerance for wellness theatre.

Her work isn't about doing more; it's about identifying the few things that move the needle on energy, hormones, and longevity, so her clients lead at full capacity for decades, not just this quarter.