Nicole North, President
Nicole is the President and Founder of Whiteboard consulting and has been leading large-scale training initiatives with Whiteboard since its inception. Nicole has been delivering human skills content for the last 10 years and is a top-rated facilitator for her engagement and passionate approach to delivery that has participants captivated from the first moment of training to the last one (and yes, that includes online training too).
Nicole’s most recent work has been focused on a partnership with Humber College, collaborating on design and delivery of a number of large-scale leadership programs. Her work in the social sector, including the Canadian Mental Health Association, SickKids Centre for Community Mental Health (SickKids CCMH), formerly known as The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre, Toronto General Hospital, Pathways, and the Ontario Government are balanced with large corporate clients like Hains-Celestial, IMAX, Volkswagon and Mitsubishi.
Nicole’s formal education includes an honors BA from the University of Toronto and an MBA from Wilfrid Laurier University. She is also certified as a Coach and as a practitioner in Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator assessments and training, Method Time Motion studies, and Appreciative Inquiry.
Nicole is a retired fitness instructor who dances on her Peloton, a cottage country lover, a vegan cook, and can out-karaoke almost anyone.
Susan Geary, Senior Associate
Susan Geary has more than thirty years of experience as a trainer, coach, consultant, and corporate education manager, and is co-author of the book “Colour Savvy: Helping you Achieve Success in Your Work Life.” Skilled at addressing individual, team and organizational performance issues, Susan has extensive experience designing training programs, and facilitating results-focused learning.
Susan’s training needs assessment, design, and development experience includes leadership, management, technical, sales, and communication skills development for clients in a wide variety of sectors.
A skilled facilitator, she has helped thousands of team leaders, managers and employees enhance their communication, leadership, performance management, sales, and customer service abilities in the not-for-profit, pharmaceutical, banking, insurance, government, and manufacturing sectors.
Susan has a Ph.D. in adult education from the University of Toronto, a B.Ed. from Cambridge University in England, and is certified to administer the following instruments: Personality Dimensions, Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, Dealing with Conflict Instrument, Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, and the Emotional Intelligence EQi-2.0.
In her spare time, Susan loves to hike and travel, and she is an enthusiastic flower and organic vegetable gardener, something we would love to get better at ourselves!
Cy Charney, Senior Associate
Whiteboard is humbled to add Cy Charney to its’ team of associates, given that Cy was the lead instructor/facilitator for the “Leaders of Tomorrow” program Nicole attended as a participant long before Whiteboard was even a twinkle in her eye.
Cy has developed a variety of unique interventions to help organizations in both the private and public sector become leaders in their field. His clients include a number of Fortune 500 companies including Sanofi, Microsoft, Hyundai, GE and Samsung as well as government departments around the world.
Cy is a member of the faculty of six Canadian Business Schools where he teaches both at the academic level and for executives.
Cy brings an innovative approach to training and consulting. He is an acknowledged leader in the area of self-directed learning and has created a unique system of team learning called Peer Mentoring™ which is used internationally. The Peer Mentoring program has been implemented successfully in organizations such as Spoornet (railways) in South Africa, the government of St. Lucia, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in Canada and major-sized private sector organizations including GE Healthcare in the US. He has also created mentoring programs that advance the learning process to ensure that those with knowledge and wisdom are able to share their skills with future leaders.
Cy co-moderates the Morning Leader Motivation room on Clubhouse with Nicole on Tuesdays at 9 am (EST) and you can often hear his adorable dog snoring in the background.
Karen Elkin, Associate
Whiteboard is thrilled to add Karen Elkin as an Associate to the Whiteboard team.
Karen is a dynamic organizational and leadership development consultant, executive coach, and facilitator with extensive experience in the public, non-profit sectors, and private sectors. She is a perfect fit for Whiteboard as she shares a passion for learning and personal growth.
Karen works with leaders and staff at all levels to inspire leadership development and a culture that supports the achievement of individual and organizational goals and success. Her facilitation style creates a safe environment that encourages personal reflection and discussion and draws upon the participants’ experiences and expertise, to support individual engagement and organizational objectives.
Karen is our top pick to coach new and aspiring managers, staff, and leaders at all levels to support career growth and transition, management/leadership development, successful change management initiatives, increased engagement, and positive and productive work culture. Karen is also a certified Emergenetics practitioner, which makes her a highly desired facilitator on our team.
Fun Facts: 1) We trust and value Karen so much, she is the in-house coach for our team. And 2), while they never shared the same stage, Karen and Nicole each participated in musical theatre productions with the same theatre company.
Rachel Jones, Associate
Rachel is an exciting member of the Whiteboard team with 20 years of experience working extensively in training, simulation, coaching and, facilitation.
Her client industries include financial institutions, insurance, health care, law enforcement, and the public sector. She is fluently bilingual (including translation), a certified teacher, and a professional actor, director, and drama teacher.
One of Whiteboard’s specialties is the use of experiential learning components into their training content. Experiential learning is NOT role play. Experiential learning allows participants to be themselves while they interact with a trained actor to practice skills in a safe place. Experiential learning is a stand out tool in Whiteboard’s tool-box that takes traditional training methodologies to the next level. Experiential learning makes training content usable immediately.
Rachel will rounds out our powerhouse team with her acting and simulation experience that will enhance experiential learning. These tools will allow participants to experience and practice learning components in a safe, caring, and empathetic environment while applying new learning and tools immediately.
Sumana Fathima Jeddy
Sumana Fathima Jeddy is a content creator, influencer and the founder of Wellness Shots, a Canadian wellness company. Sumana has completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Microbiology followed by a Master of Public Health degree, both from the University of British Columbia.
She spent 10 years of her career in infectious disease surveillance in public health (many of those years were spent in a laboratory extracting DNA/RNA from viruses) as a scientist and later in management leading a team of analysts to support epidemiology and surveillance of infectious diseases. Sumana has published 20+ peer-reviewed research articles on various infectious diseases and has presented disease research at international conferences in Canada and the United States.
Her brand Wellness Shots provides targeted outcome-based wellness strategies for healthcare businesses. She does this by identifying unique organizational barriers and provides solutions that are not only grounded in science, data, and empathy but ones that are also modern and playful. Sumana believes that healthy people will create healthy communities. She empowers and educates individuals, organizations and communities about workplace wellness, workplace toxicity, and burnout. She also offers educational workshops on burnout and is currently mentoring MPH students and graduates on how to navigate leadership challenges to be better healthcare leaders.
Sumana has an effervescent personality and values compassion, community, empathy and kindness. She loves the outdoors, and physical wellness is a priority. She is an extrovert with many friends around the globe but she also appreciates silence and reflective hours. Her motto is to live in the present and joyfully say no to anything that does not bring you any joy.
You can find her on Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse and Twitter @sjeddywellness. She is also very active on LinkedIn and her website is www.sumanajeddy.com