Every leader has walked the path, stumbled, and risen stronger. Our curated team of experienced leaders is here to help you pave the way.

 MPH, MCPM, PCCP, PMP   

Founder & CEO

Brit is a founder, educator, and systems thinker with more than fifteen years leading large-scale transformation, learning design, and change initiatives across the private sector, healthcare, government, and mission-driven organizations, she knows what it takes to move people and organizations through moments that matter.

As Founder and CEO Brit brings adult education, strategy, project and change management, and organizational leadership into every program and partnership. 

Her work lives at the intersection of psychology, change theory, and business strategy, because the realities executives face rarely fit neatly into one discipline.

Brit is committed to supporting professionals through transition and reinvention: the quiet reckonings that come mid-career, the pressure of leading teams through ambiguity, the cost of carrying a vision no one else sees yet, and the work of rebuilding confidence after the role or the path shifts beneath you.

At Anchor & Ascend, Brit supports the strategic design and delivery of programs that help individuals reconnect with their purpose and support organizations in building inclusive, resilient cultures. 

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

Clinical Director & Curriculum Designer

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.

M.A.(Leadership), RP 

Psychotherapist, Curriculum Designer & Instructor 

Colin is the kind of clinician senior executives trust: someone who has sat on both sides of the table and understands the pressures that come with the top seat. 

With more than two decades spanning clinical leadership, program direction, founding businesses, and university instruction, he brings the kind of range CEOs and senior leaders can use.

As a psychotherapist, Colin works with the realities executives know intimately but rarely get to name out loud: the weight of decisions that move people and dollars, the isolation that comes with being the one everyone looks to, the quiet toll of relentless performance, and the strain demanding careers put on relationships.

 His clinical work is direct, grounded, and paced for people whose time is the most contested thing they own.

As a curriculum designer and instructor, Colin translates hard-won operational experience into learning that holds up under scrutiny. He has built and led programs, diversified revenue under pressure, co-founded ventures from the ground up, and facilitated complex multi-stakeholder decisions at the senior leadership table. He teaches what he has done.

For CEOs and senior leaders who want a therapist and instructor who already knows the terrain, Colin is an invaluable resource and support. 

BSW, MAH, RSW

Social Worker & Clinical Curriculum Support

Most therapists have never held the weight of an organization's day-to-day operations, trials and tribulations as a senior leader. Heather has. 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 room 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 all of it. 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)

Psychotherapist & Instructor

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.

BAH

Curriculum Designer & Instructor  

Erin is the Institute's governance expert: government experience, senior public-sector leadership, and deep familiarity with the political and accountability environments that senior leaders navigate every day.

Erin spent several years at the Ontario Ministry of Education, providing strategic policy support and coordinating briefing materials for the Deputy Minister, Minister, and Premier's Office. Earlier, she held roles in the Minister's Office at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, where she developed the political acuity and high-stakes coordination skills that come only from inside the machine, managing multi-stakeholder processes under real pressure, with real consequences.

That background shapes how Erin shows up for clients. She understands the unwritten rules, the optics, the council dynamics, the Ministry-facing pressures, and the accountability weight that sits on a senior leader's desk. She can speak to all of it without needing it explained. 

Her advice is sharp, discreet, and grounded in the lived realities of public-sector leadership.

For senior leaders who want someone who already knows the environment they're operating in, not someone learning it from the sidelines.

CHE, CLS, CCIP

Curriculum Designer & Instructor 

Sarah lends over twenty years of system planning, governance, community engagement, and health equity leadership to all she does with her clients. Sarah designs curriculum grounded in real system work, not theory pulled from a shelf.

Her instruction is designed for the people steering complex, high-stakes organizations: CAOs, executives, and senior leaders who translate strategy into operational reality. Sarah cuts through the noise, turning equity and other abstract commitments into the specific decisions, partnerships, and coordination moves that actually shift outcomes.

Sarah is known for building the kind of cross-sector partnerships that hold up under pressure. Her sessions are sharp, practical, and unafraid of nuance.

Participants describe Sarah as rigorous, engaging-an instructor who treats learners as the strategists they already are.