UofA's 10 Year Plan to be a Top 50; Al - enabled Global Leader Driving Transformational impact
Dr. Verna Yiu is known as one of Canada’s most respected academic and healthcare leaders and has
advised health care systems across the country as well as across the globe. Dr. Yiu is currently Provost
and Vice President Academic at the University of Alberta. Her past leadership roles included being the
first female dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta, Vice Dean in
Faculty Affairs and Assistant Dean of Student Affairs. She then shifted leadership into the healthcare
system in 2012 being appointed as the Chief Medical Officer and Vice President of Quality in Alberta
Health Services (AHS). In 2016, she took over the role of President and CEO of AHS, the largest
integrated province wide healthcare system in Canada and remains as the longest serving leader in that
role for over 6 years.
Dr. Yiu has spent more than 2 decades in leadership, spanning academia to the healthcare system. In Dr.
Yiu’s 6 year tenure as President/CEO, AHS was named as one of the Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 4
consecutive years along with other employer awards including Best Diversity Employer, Best Employer
for Young People, and Alberta’s Top 70 Employer. Other accomplishments include optimizing integration
of care within the province, so much so as to receive acknowledgement from the International Society
of Integrated Care that AHS was in the top 5 most integrated systems in the world in 2018. Other
included: improving efficiencies for a sustainable healthcare system, implementation of a province wide
electronic medical record system and led AHS in 2019-2022 in its response to one of the worse public
health crisis we will ever know in our lifetime, COVID19.
As Provost and VPA for University of Alberta since 2022, she led the creation of the 10 year university
strategic plan called SHAPE (launched in 2023) followed by 3 year action plans. She co-led the
development of the People Strategy, institutional values and oversaw the creation of a new activity
based budget model for the university. A professor of Pediatrics in the division of pediatric nephrology,
Dr. Yiu is an alumni of both University of Alberta and Harvard University. Her research is focused on
health systems and most recently, she is part of a team of researchers looking at creating smartwear for
those requiring additional strength supports. She continues to work on the front lines, providing care to
young patients and their families at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton.
Dr. Yiu has won numerous awards including: Global Woman of Vision in 2019, second on the Medical
Post’s 2021 Power list of physicians in Canada, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (in recognition of
significant contributions to Alberta 2022), Physician of the Year award (from the Edmonton Zone
Medical Staff Association 2022) and most recently the Graduate Student Association Citation Award in
2023. She has also received recognition through multiple lectureships including Convocation Speaker for
the University of Calgary (2022), the Garner King Memorial Lecture (2023) and the Cy Frank Memorial
Lecture (2025). She is currently the Board Chair for the Canadian Institute of Healthcare Information and
Vice Board Chair for Health Workforce Canada, both national organizations that aims to improve health
data for better health outcomes for Canadians. She is also sits as on the board of directors of EPCOR, an
unique governance board where the unanimous shareholder is the City of Edmonton..