Maria Tassone

Maria Tassone is the Executive Director, Education & Professional Development at the University Health Network (UHN). Her work focuses on the interface between education and practice, leading change in complex systems, professional development across health care roles, health human resource needs and team-based learning and care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Maria was the Provincial Education Task Force Chair and Project Lead for COVIDcarelearning.ca, an online platform that supported over 17,000 health care workers for redeployment. From 2009- 2021 Maria was the inaugural Director of the Centre for Interprofessional Education, a strategic partnership between the University of Toronto and UHN. Maria was the co-lead of the Canadian Interprofessional Health Leadership Collaborative, one of four international innovation collaboratives awarded by the Institute of Medicine in Washington. Her experiences in collaborative leadership for health system change contributed to the development, implementation and evaluation of the Collaborative Change Leadership™ program, for which Maria is currently Co-Director. Over the course of her career, Maria has been recognized as a leader in innovation related to health care innovation and interprofessional education and care, with the 3M Team Innovation Award and the Ontario Hospital Ted Freeman Award for Education Innovation. She is also seen as a mentor for emerging leaders within and beyond her profession, and for this she was awarded the Canadian Physiotherapy Association National Mentorship Award. Maria holds a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy from McGill University, a Master of Science from the University of Western Ontario, and she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Therapy, Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.