College president Anne Sado new ORION board chair

TORONTO, Nov. 22 /CNW/ - The Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION) announced today that Anne Sado, president of Toronto's George Brown College, has been elected chair of its board of directors.

Ms. Sado, who first joined the board in 2004, replaces Maxim Jean-Louis, president and CEO of Contact North, who steps down as chair after three years.

"As the new board chair, Anne brings exceptional leadership skills to ORION," said ORION President and CEO, Dr. Darin Graham. "Together with her background in engineering, education and business, she has the right mix of knowledge and experience to help steer the organization on its future path."

"I'm excited to be given this opportunity to lead the ORION board and help build on the organization's capacity to support and advance research and education in Ontario," said Sado. "I am looking forward to working with board members and Dr. Graham on the next phase of ORION and continuing to promote awareness of ORION as the backbone of innovation in Ontario."

Prior to her position at George Brown College, Ms. Sado was Senior Vice-President, Business Processes and Operational Effectiveness at Bell Canada. She holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and an MBA from the University of Toronto. Among a long list of volunteer activities, Ms. Sado has been involved with Junior Achievement, YWCA of Greater Toronto, the Trillium Health Centre, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. Earlier this month, she was inducted into University of Toronto's prestigious Engineering Hall of Distinction.

"We are extremely grateful for Maxim's leadership and guidance over the years," said Dr. Graham, who notes that Jean-Louis has been a member of the board since ORION's founding in 2002 and has served as chair since 2007. "During his time, the organization has evolved from its building and expansion phase, to a more service-oriented organization working with the research and education community to identify and meet their advanced network and enabling technology needs."

"We are now moving into an exciting phase of ORION, expanding network capacity from 10G to 100G capacity, and continuing to develop and roll out more services for our users," said Dr. Graham. "Through her leadership, Anne and board members will play an increasingly important role in helping to raise awareness and promote the role and contribution of ORION as critical infrastructure for research, education, collaboration and scientific achievement," he said.

Other ORION board members include Lisa de Wilde, CEO of TVO; Sara Diamond, President of OCAD University; Brian Down, Chief Technologist, North American Commercial Hardware at Oracle Canada; Dr. Khaled El Emam, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information in the Faculty of Medicine and School of Information Technology and Engineering at the University of Ottawa; Dr. Alan George, Associate Provost, Information Systems and Technology at the University of Waterloo; and Robert J. Kennedy, former Director of Education for the North Bay Area School Board and most recently as Educational Consultant for Apple Canada.

About ORION
Supporting speeds hundreds of times faster than the Internet, ORION is Ontario's advanced research and education network. A not-for-profit corporation, ORION links 1.7 million Ontario researchers, scientists, students, teachers and staff who depend on ORION for teaching and learning and to enable their research collaborations and discoveries in physics, cancer research, environmental science and technologies, social sciences and the humanities and multiple other disciplines. Part of Canada's advanced network alliance, ORION connects users and institutions to each other and, through CANARIE - Canada's advanced research and innovation network, to high-capacity research and education networks, partners and collaborators across Canada and around the world. Learn more at www.orion.on.ca.

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