With her days spent as a busy consultant, helping Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) members achieve the best people and organizational environments for the best patient care outcomes, it is a wonder Dana Ross has any time or energy for her favourite activity – walking! Luckily, Dana is a born multi-tasker, somehow effectively juggling her many work projects and tasks with travel and personal learning pursuits as well. How does she do it?
Dana Ross is a Consultant within the Provincial Health Human Resources (HR) Research and Planning department at the OHA. In this role, Dana leads the development and implementation of the OHA Provincial Health HR Work Plan that sets out the direction the OHA will take over the next two years with respect to people and their work environments, for the benefit of patients. The Work Plan is aligned and integrated with the OHA’s Strategic Plan for 2010-13, given that ‘Optimizing Health Human Resources’ is identified as one of the four key strategic directions for the Association. Along with this, Dana also leads the OHA’s Strategic HR Provincial Leadership Council (made up of hospital CEOs, Chief HR Officers, and other health care executives), while engaging with OHA members and health care stakeholders through surveys, regional forums, and working groups.
In addition to these responsibilities, Dana also works on a number of special HR-related projects. One such current project is a pilot study involving three hospitals (Campbellford Memorial Hospital, London Health Sciences Centre, and the Toronto East General Hospital) that is examining the relationships between employee experience and human capital performance by connecting data in their employee experience surveys and key HR indicators on a departmental basis.
Prior to her time at the OHA, Dana was a Senior Consultant at a small HR/labour economics consulting firm where she managed over thirty projects focused on the labour market, HR management, and policy research and analysis in a variety of sectors including construction, manufacturing services, IT, engineering, and tourism. Dana graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Business Administration from Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Ontario), during which time she had the opportunity to participate in a four-month exchange program to study international business at Vaxjo University, in Vaxjo, Sweden – an experience that allowed her to discover her passion for travel and exploring new things. Dana also received her Masters of Industrial Relations from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
As mentioned above, Dana loves to get her walking shoes on and explore – particular new neighbourhoods within Toronto. She also enjoys learning new things, which as of late has included – the French language, wine education, and stock market trading. With her passion for exploration and boundless energy, there is no telling what she will move on to next!