Dr. Verna Yiu is known as one of Canada’s most respected academic and healthcare leaders and has advised health care systems across the country as well as across the globe. Dr. Yiu is currently Provost and Vice President Academic at the University of Alberta. Her past leadership roles included being the first female dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, Vice Dean in Faculty Affairs and Assistant Dean of Student Affairs. She then shifted leadership into the healthcare system in 2012 being appointed as the Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Quality in Alberta Health Services (AHS). In 2016, she took over the role of President and CEO of AHS, the largest integrated province wide healthcare system in Canada and remains as the longest serving leader in that role for over 6 years. Dr. Yiu has spent more than 2 decades in leadership, spanning academia to the healthcare system. In Dr. Yiu’s 6 year tenure as President/CEO, AHS was named as one of the Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 4 consecutive years along with other employer awards including Best Diversity Employer, Best Employer for Young People, and Alberta’s Top 70 Employer. Other accomplishments include optimizing integration of care within the province, so much so as to receive acknowledgement from the International Society of Integrated Care that AHS was in the top 5 most integrated systems in the world in 2018. Other included: improving efficiencies for a sustainable healthcare system, implementation of a province wide electronic medical record system and led AHS in 2019-2022 in its response to one of the worse public health crisis we will ever know in our lifetime, COVID19. As Provost and VPA for University of Alberta since 2022, she led the creation of the 10 year university strategic plan called SHAPE (launched in 2023) followed by 3 year action plans. She co-led the development of the People Strategy, institutional values and oversaw the creation of a new activity based budget model for the university. A professor of Pediatrics in the division of pediatric nephrology, Dr. Yiu is an alumni of both University of Alberta and Harvard University. Her research is focused on health systems and most recently, she is part of a team of researchers looking at creating smartwear for those requiring additional strength supports. She continues to work on the front lines, providing care to young patients and their families at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton. Dr. Yiu has won numerous awards including: Global Woman of Vision in 2019, second on the Medical Post’s 2021 Power list of physicians in Canada, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (in recognition of significant contributions to Alberta 2022), Physician of the Year award (from the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association 2022) and most recently the Graduate Student Association Citation Award in 2023. She has also received recognition through multiple lectureships including Convocation Speaker for the University of Calgary (2022), the Garner King Memorial Lecture (2023) and the Cy Frank Memorial Lecture (2025). She is currently the Board Chair for the Canadian Institute of Healthcare Information and Vice Board Chair for Health Workforce Canada, both national organizations that aims to improve health data for better health outcomes for Canadians. She is also sits as on the board of directors of EPCOR, an unique governance board where the unanimous shareholder is the City of Edmonton.