Thursday, June 13: 6:30pm (panel discussion begins at 7pm)

  Waterfront Banquet & Conference Centre

555 Bay Street North

Hamilton, ON L8L 1H1

Throughout our career we ask “Now what?” this may involve striving for a new job prospect elsewhere or seizing an opportunity where you are.

Our panelists (Denise Evanovitch, Christine Bruce, Jennifer O’Leary & Karen Scraba) will share their career journeys so we can explore what worked for them. They will discuss strategies to get you recognized in the workplace and help you gain a spot at the table. As a group, they will discuss ways to overcome the barrier of thinking: “I’m just a bench tech”.

This event will give you the chance to imagine opportunities for yourself; you never know where your career will take you, unless you manage it yourself.

Join us to get your questions answered on all things career development!

Denise Evanovitch is the Regional Manager, Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network (ORBCoN). Denise is a "seasoned" MLT, with 42 years of experience, mostly in the field of transfusion medicine. Denise has worked in the hospital, blood collection and Ministry sectors. She is the Vice Chair of the Ontario Transfusion Quality Improvement Plan Committee, a member of the Choosing Wisely Ontario Steering Committee, and the Canadian Obstetrical and Pediatric Transfusion Network. She is the former President of the regulatory CMLTO and a volunteer with CSMLS.

Helping hospitals meet accreditation and regulatory requirements through best practice promotion, provision of education, quality improvement and audit tools and patient blood management are Denise's passions. She also likes to remind other health care providers the importance of involving laboratory professionals with key health care initiatives and improvements. "We serve our patients better when we work together".

Christine Bruce is a multi-faceted senior leader in the Canadian medical laboratory and diagnostics services industry and has spent her 20-year career primarily leading laboratory services delivery in both the private and public sector. Currently, she serves as the administrative director for pathology & laboratory medicine at the Grand River and St. Mary's General Hospitals in Kitchener.

Christine has held varied positions in the key areas of new testing, business development, operations management, quality, and integration of mergers and acquisitions, where she has demonstrated a special talent for divining creative solutions to improve and expand laboratory testing applications. As an industry champion for innovation, high employee performance and client service, Christine has committed her career to improving patient care by deeply investing in healthcare workers, and creating great places to work.

Jennifer O’Leary has been teaching Clinical Genetics MLTs for 15 years, having previously worked as a Senior Genetics MLT and teaching technologist in Ontario. She has pursued opportunities to: facilitate students from all MLT disciplines in their interprofessional collaboration curriculum; support internationally educated health care professionals as they prepare to write Canadian certification exams; and guide working professionals through their continuing education in leadership studies.

Jenn is a passionate, life-long learner who completed her Masters at Royal Roads University with combined studies in Leadership and Learning & Technology. Jenn’s leadership philosophy embraces the concepts that leaders often have no formal title and one can never underestimate their capacity to influence change from where they stand.

Karen Scraba brings a career’s worth of diversely-applied experience in clinical diagnostics and medical devices sales, marketing and clinical education. She is skilled in Alliance Management, networked globally, and has designed and implemented partnering programs between public and private health sectors and medical device companies.

Karen began her career as a bench technologist, demonstrating an ability to manage up-time, efficiency and productivity during early phases of the rapid evolution of laboratory instruments and automation. After a contact in Botswana, Africa, Karen transitioned to a technical support role with a lab instrument company, and has shaped her career by facilitating cross-functional communication and education between laboratorians, phlebotomists, nurses, physicians and hospital executives with professional associations and industry departments of innovation, R&D and marketing. Karen gravitated towards successive roles in the medical devices industry, more recently focused on value services supporting patient outcomes, healthcare economics and workflow improvements.

Dr. Kevin Fonseca is a Clinical Virologist at the Provincial Laboratory, Alberta Precision Laboratories, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. He has a PhD in Microbiology and MSc in Applied Cell Science and Virology, and a Diplomate of the American Board of Medical Microbiology.

He is the Program Lead for the vaccine preventable agents such measles and mumps, and was the chair for the Certifying Committee for the Elimination of Measles & Rubella in Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada in 2015. His research collaborations are in influenza, the arboviruses and point-of care testing and most favorite viruses are measles, mumps, zikavirus and hepatitis B.

New organisms are always appearing in healthcare, from antibiotic resistance to novel pathogens crossing the animal-human species barrier. Each new organism seems to cause us to forget Routine Practices that are in place to keep healthcare workers safe all the time, regardless of a new organism. This presentation will review the history of new organisms in our world, and steps to ensure that we are prepared between outbreaks or pandemics, and how to communicate or inform ourselves in an efficient and accurate manner.