Registration Now Open!

About the Session: The Care Cycle: Creating a Culture Where Mental Health Is Part of the Plan Mental health should be part of the everyday care we extend to our teams, not just addressed in crisis. This workshop offers practical tools to help clinical academic administrators normalize mental health in team conversations, respond confidently when someone is struggling, and build flexible support plans that allow people to stay at work when possible. We’ll also explore how to support co-workers who take on extra responsibilities during a colleague’s leave, ensuring care is extended across the entire team. Learning Objectives By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: Apply strategies to reduce stigma and encourage employees to seek support when facing mental health challenges at work. Use compassionate conversation starters to confidently engage with staff who appear to be struggling. Implement a step-by-step framework to co-create flexible work plans that support employees who wish to stay at work while managing their mental health. Support co-workers absorbing additional responsibilities with tools that promote fairness, balance, and burnout prevention. About Sarah: Sarah is the Principal of Sarah Jenner Consulting, the Executive Director of Mindful Employer Canada, a facilitator, a training formulator, and a human-centered leader. She has spent the last 12 years creating leadership development programs that show leaders how to address workplace issues, cultivate team relationships, and improve psychological health and safety.

About the Session: From Scarcity to Sustainability: Reimagining Wellness in Clinical and Medical Education Administration through a Hope Circuits Lens In the wake of the pandemic, clinical and medical education administrators face unprocessed grief, trauma, and burnout—pressures heightened by escalating workloads and austerity measures. While institutions ask us to be hopeful and visionary, little space is provided to process the realities of “the age of great overwhelm.” This gap between aspiration and implementation threatens both individual well-being and organizational sustainability. This session calls for recalibration. Instead of striving to “bounce back,” participants will explore how to move forward—shifting from survival-mode management toward sustainable wellness cultures at personal, team, and institutional levels. Drawing on the Hope Circuits Project, led by Dr. Jessica Riddell, the session introduces ten conceptual tools that transform despair into agency, disillusionment into clarity, and exhaustion into courageous hope. Participants will leave with practical strategies to embed these tools into daily practice and act as architects of change within their own ecosystems—building pathways toward systems that foster human flourishing and long-term sustainability. About Jessica: Dr. Jessica Riddell is a Full Professor of Early Modern Literature in the English Department at Bishop’s University (Québec, Canada). She holds the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence and leads conversations about systems-change in higher education that shifts the focus from resilience to human and ecological flourishing. She facilitates dialogue at the national and international levels about how universities fulfil their public purpose. Her recent book, Hope Circuits: Rewiring Universities and other Systems for Human Flourishing (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024), is an expansive call for the reinvention of universities and the renewal of their social contract.

About the Session: Hybrid Ergonomics for the Desk-Bound: Practical Strategies for Comfort and Injury Prevention This interactive seminar will explore practical, evidence-based ergonomic strategies tailored to the demands of administrative and desk-based work. Participants will learn how to optimize their workstation setup, recognize and address common postural habits, and implement simple movement strategies to reduce discomfort and prevent injury. Whether working in-office or remotely, attendees will leave with actionable tools to improve comfort, productivity, and overall well-being. By the end of this session, participants will be able to: Identify key ergonomic principles to improve workstation setup and reduce strain. How to find and maintain proper sitting and standing posture to minimize musculoskeletal discomfort associated with prolonged poor posture. Apply simple movement and stretching strategies throughout the workday to enhance mobility and prevent injury. About Mitch: Mitchell Starkman, PT, FCAMPT, is a registered physiotherapist and the owner of two multidisciplinary clinics specializing in musculoskeletal care. A graduate of Queen’s University (2014), Mitchell holds an FCAMPT designation and integrates manual therapy, exercise-based rehabilitation, and dry needling in clinical practice. With a strong interest in workplace wellness and injury prevention, Mitchell has delivered seminars and workshops on ergonomics and movement strategies for office workers across various industries. They are also the creator of Desk Jockey Physio, a platform dedicated to helping desk-based professionals stay healthy, mobile, and pain-free. DRESS FOR COMFORT & be ready to stand up and move around the room.

About the Session: How to make AI work for you Administrative work is vital, but it can involve repetitive tasks that contribute significantly to mental load, detracting professionals from their core responsibilities. Generative AI is already transforming many aspects of the modern workplace, and it can be used to streamline workflows to be more automated and efficient, making heavy workloads manageable. This workshop will explore leading AI platforms (including ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and Gemini) to tackle administrative pain points. You’ll master a versatile prompting framework, allowing you to get high-quality output from AI quickly and reliably. We will discuss AI hallucinations and security concerns, focusing on practical solutions you can immediately implement. We’ll dive into common use cases, including taking minutes, scheduling, managing documents, reviewing communications and more. Finally, we’ll explore more advanced solutions such as agentic workflows and see how they can transform your approach to administrative work. Learning Objectives By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: Identify common administrative tasks that can be streamlined using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini. Apply a flexible prompting framework to generate reliable, context-aware outputs that save time and reduce repetitive effort. Recognize potential limitations and risks of AI (data privacy, inaccurate information), and implement practical strategies to mitigate them. About Keshav: Keshav Raina is a Data Analyst in Information Technology Services at the University of Toronto. An early adopter of generative AI in higher-education settings, he has delivered multiple demos and workshops that have drawn hundreds of academic and administrative attendees, focusing on effective prompt engineering, mitigation of AI hallucinations and risks, and AI platform selection. Keshav brings real-world insights on integrating AI into administrative workflows to improve efficiency and reduce staff mental load.

About the Session: Part 1: Creating Respectful Cultures: Incivility, Emotions, and Everyday Conflict Conflict in academic departments can show up as everyday incivility or as explosive confrontations that drain focus and stall progress. This two-part series equips administrators with practical tools to steady themselves under pressure, respond to difficult behaviours with confidence, and model inclusive leadership. Participants will leave with strategies to transform conflict into fertile ground for resilience, innovation, and stronger workplace cultures. In academic departments, stress often doesn’t arrive as a storm—it seeps in like a steady drip. A sharp email, an eye roll in a meeting, a colleague brushing off another’s input. On their own, these moments may seem petty, but together they wear down trust, erode collaboration, and strip away dignity. When such behaviours intersect with differences in power, background, or identity, the impact multiplies, leaving colleagues sidelined or invisible. For administrators holding departments together, this slow erosion of respect can be just as damaging as the explosive conflicts that erupt when tensions finally break open. This session is an invitation to reflect and recalibrate. We will examine the hidden costs of everyday incivility, explore how stress and emotional triggers shape our responses, and practice strategies to meet these moments with steadiness. Rather than reacting on autopilot, you’ll learn practical tools to regulate emotions, lean into conflict, and model inclusive behaviours that shift the culture. You will leave with approaches that not only protect your own integrity, but also nurture resilience, spark more innovative ways of responding to conflict, and strengthen your leadership in cultivating healthier, more sustainable workplaces. Part 2: Leading Through High Conflict: Strategies for Leading in Academic Medicine Some conflicts don’t simmer quietly, they flare into firestorms that consume time, energy, and trust. High-conflict behaviours—blame, all-or-nothing thinking, constant escalation—can spread through departments like invasive species, choking collaboration and exhausting everyone in their path. For administrators, these moments test patience, drain focus, and threaten the stability of already strained teams. This session offers a way forward. We will explore how to recognize the patterns of high-conflict behaviour early, interrupt escalation, and respond with strategies that preserve professionalism and restore balance. Through practical frameworks and real-world examples, you’ll practice approaches that transform even the most volatile situations into openings for resilience, collaboration, and renewal. Building on Part 1, this session equips you with leadership tools to steady your department in turbulent times and cultivate a healthier, more sustainable workplace. About Diane: About Diane LeBlanc: Diane LeBlanc is an organizational researcher and consultant whose career has been shaped by a deep curiosity about how conflict unfolds in the workplace. While completing her Master of Science and PhD in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, she developed a formal definition of conflict in healthcare, an academic contribution that continues to fuel her passion for advancing how organizations respond to conflict. Since earning her doctorate in 2019, Diane has led a consulting practice that partners with organizations to strengthen leadership, workplace culture, and organizational health. She is especially committed to moving people beyond avoidance, equipping them with the insight and skills to transform conflict from a source of strain into a catalyst for collaboration, resilience, and growth. Bridging research and practice, Diane brings both depth and energy to the challenges of organizational life. She works alongside administrators and leaders to foster healthier cultures, cultivate innovation, and approach conflict not as a threat, but as a pathway to stronger, more sustainable workplaces.