Health Workforce Edge Team

Workforce Edge Senior Team

Workforce Edge provides hands-on expertise and deep change management necessary for organizations to transform health staff scheduling and planning.

Shawn Drake

Shawn Drake

Managing Partner

Shawn is a global leader with comparative expertise across the continuum of care in designing and activating health workforce optimization transformations and regional policy change. He is dedicated to helping healthcare organizations sustain service delivery, and to better the daily lives, of the healthcare workforce. He sees ‘workforce management’ only capable at being effective – if the discipline looks far beyond the software/systems solution perspective.

Shawn leverages a PhD in public policy and a MSc in Organization Analysis and Strategic Human Resource Management. He found his way to healthcare initially through his graduate education at King’s College London (where Florence Nightingale had established the first school of nursing) and during a Ford Foundation graduate fellowship at Colin Powell and Charles B. Rangel Centers at CCNY-CUNY, focused on the advancement of under-represented populations in the US.

Shawn regularly presents on the measured impacts of Workforce Edge’s Health Optimization Model © which has been continuously refined over two decades across the continuum of care. He is an active member of key organizations in the field such as: American College of Healthcare Executives (Chapter: Healthcare Leaders of New York), American Hospital Association, American Organization for Nursing Leadership, Canadian College of Health Leaders, Caring Science International Collaborative and the Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis.

Tila Smith

Tila Smith

Managing Partner

Tila is dedicated to our organizational vision of making healthcare work better. Since 2007, she has delivered benefits to clients through healthcare workforce deployment and scheduling transformation projects drawing on our integrated suite of consulting services across Canada, United States and Australia.  She is a workforce optimization expert, having led the master rotation design and relief workforce consulting services for over a decade, including developing certification programs and delivering training for master rotation designers.

Tila joined Workforce Edge as a consulting lead and project manager with a background in program management, change management, business analysis and system implementations.  She holds a Bachelors of Business Administration and a PMP designation.

Chuck Betts

Chuck Betts

Workforce Optimization Consulting Manager

Practice Lead, USA

Chuck is an experienced leader and project delivery executive focused on strategic workforce deployment and process optimization across healthcare organizations. Chuck’s expertise is in implementing transformational operating models and new processes. He has deep experience with integrating technology, process, job design and policy to deliver new ways of working resulting in improved organizational performance and employee satisfaction.

In addition to leading specific client projects, Chuck leads our consulting practice in the United States of America.

Jillian Chisholm-Schwieger

Jillian Chisholm-Schwieger

Executive Director, Workforce Optimization & Change Management

Practice Lead, Europe 

Jillian is an executive leader with extensive professional nursing and executive experience across the long-term, continuing care and education sectors. Jillian has had an extended focus on leading innovative staff scheduling transformations through enhanced stakeholder collaboration. She specializes in change management and organizational learning.  In addition to leading specific client projects, Jillian leads our consulting practice in Europe.

Workforce Edge Advisory Board

John A. King

Formerly: COO, St. Michael’s Toronto, ADM Health Ministry of Ontario

Jayne Felgen

President Emerita, Creative Healthcare Management

Barb Lawrie

Special Projects: Ministry of Health; Formerly: Chief Nurse Scientist & Chief Clinical Information Officer, Vancouver Coastal Health

Renée Légaré

Executive in Residence: Telfer School of Management, Univ. of Ottawa; Formerly: EVP & CHRO, The Ottawa Hospital

Ann Lynch

Formerly: EVP & Chief Clinical Officer, McGill University Health Centre Montreal

Bertine McKenna

Formerly: President & COO, University of Vermont Medical Center; EVP & COO, Bassett Healthcare NY

Marilyn Monk

Formerly: EVP & Chief Nursing Officer, Sick Kids; VP & CNO, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital

Former Advisory Board Members

Janet Davidson

Chair, Nova-Scotia Health; Formerly: Chair, Alberta Health Services, CEO, Trillium Health Partners Toronto

Lynn Stevenson

Chair, Health Employers Association of BC; Formerly: ADM BC Ministry of Health; EVP, Island Health Authority