Elected to the Kerry’s Place Board of Directors in February 2018 and appointed Chair of the Board in 2022, Jan is a highly regarded mental health and neurodiversity governance expert and advocate. Highlights include serving on the Board of Trustees at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for nine years, as both Vice Chair and Chair of the Governance Committee, and the Advisory Board of LIGHTS, a partnership with Community Living Toronto that enables new housing opportunities for the intellectually disabled. She also sat on the Advisory Council of ACCESS Open Minds, the Parent Advisory Council at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and was a former Board member of the Ontario OCD Network.

Professionally, Jan spent 25 years with the leading global executive search firm Egon Zehnder, where she was Managing Partner of the Toronto Office for many years. In 2016, she joined the Ted Rogers School of Management as Graduate Career Coach for the graduate management programs for five years. Her early career was spent with JP Morgan in New York and Toronto, as well as in the not-for-profit sector. Her education includes a BSc with Distinction from Northwestern University, an MA in Deafness Rehabilitation from New York University and an MBA from Columbia University.

Jan is the parent of an autistic son and the author of the best-selling memoir Hold on Tight: A Parent’s Journey Raising Children with Mental Illness, which has been honoured with the Mom’s Choice Award®.