Board Members

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Alies Maybee

Chair
Alies Maybee
Toronto, Ontario

Since 2011, Alies has brought her patient, caregiver, and technology background to her commitment as a patient partner. At her local hospital, Alies was a founding co-chair of the Community Engagement Council. She collaborates at the provincial, regional, and local levels with a focus on digital health and is on several advisory committees at the federal level.

Her second focus is on patient engagement (PE) practices. She has developed and implemented an innovative PE framework and is currently experimenting with a novel way to hear from diverse perspectives on health equity.

In the research area, Alies has been a patient partner on more than ten research projects, has led peer research into being a patient partner in research and delivered workshops on partnering with patients. She has evaluated hundreds of grant applications on a research management committee.

She is one of 12 co-founders of the Patient Advisors Network (PAN).

Amy Ma

Amy Ma
Montreal, Quebec

Amy Ma is currently a patient / citizen advisor with Choosing Wisely Canada. She is actively involved in Empowering the patient / citizen voice across Canada with organizations such as the Patient Advisory Network, L’Appui Montreal (caregiver advocacy), and Nourish (environmental nutrition).

Amy’s journey in health system advocacy began when she joined the Family Advisory group at her local children’s hospital, as she had one child who had two surgeries before the age of two. Since then, she got involved during the hospital’s accreditation process, lobbied for lower hospital parking rates, and even got people with disabilities involved in a city-wide mass casualty simulation.

Ongoing projects include co-designing a brochure with Indigenous communities that regularly go to Montreal for care and exploring the impact of digital health on equity. Amy has an interest in maternal mental health, accessibility, and health equity.

Donna Rubenstein

Donalda MacIsaac
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Donalda has been a dedicated, full-time healthcare and social change advocate for her entire adult life, and has served in a variety of roles in local, provincial and national organizations. She is a Patient Advisor with Nova Scotia Health, and sits on the board of Canadian Association for Retired Persons (CARP) and other boards. She hosts a weekly radio show and is the co-founder of the QE2 Diversity in Health Care Bursary.

Donalda joined the PAN Board in 2024.

 

Maxime Lê

Maxime Lê
Ottawa, Ontario

Maxime Lê has been a patient partner at The Ottawa Hospital and Ottawa Hospital Research Institute since 2017.  He has also been co-chair of the Ontario Health East region Patient and Family Advisory Council since 2021. In 2023, he joined the Equity in Health Systems Lab as patient partner and investigator. Maxime has been a PAN board member since 2018.

Being francophone, racialized, and living with chronic illness and an invisible disability, Maxime applies his experience of intersectionality into the work he does, specializing in health communication. Professionally, Maxime is founder and principal consultant at Lê & Co. Health Communication, where he wears his patient partner and health communicator hats to rebuild trust and improve how healthcare services are delivered and how health research is conducted with and for all people in Canada.

He holds a Master of Arts in Communication, specializing in Science, Society and Policy from the University of Ottawa since 2021, and an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Health Sciences since 2018. He has earned additional certificates from Yale School of Public Health and Harvard Business School Online.

Sandra Holdsworth

Sandra Holdsworth
Gravenhurst, Ontario

Sandra Holdsworth is retired from a 30-year career in banking. She received a liver transplant 28 years ago after being undiagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis and Crohn’s disease. In 2012, she required a permanent ileostomy. She is currently on the waitlist at UHN for a liver & kidney transplant.

Drawing on her lived experience as a transplant recipient, dialysis patient, and organ donation advocate, Sandra mentors others awaiting or recovering from transplant. She champions patient involvement in healthcare, co-design, system transformation, and research.

For over a decade, Sandra has worked with the Canadian Donation and Transplant Research Program as a patient partner and co-lead on the Quality-of-Life Theme, helping shape research, support recruitment, and lead knowledge translation. Last year she took on the additional role as a co lead on the Patient family donor platform.

She joined the Muskoka and Area Ontario Health Team (OHT) in 2019, serving on the Steering Committee, Alliance Council, and several working groups. She co-founded and co-led the Muskoka and Area OHT Patient, Family, and Caregiver Advisory Committee before stepping down in December 2023 to focus on provincial engagement as a Patient Partner on the Ontario Minister of Health’s PFAC. She also contributed to the OHT System Transformation Advisory Committee and Performance Measures Working Group.

Sandra serves on the board of the Patient Advisors Network (PAN) and is deeply involved in primary care and transplant-related research, including projects focused on AI.

Locally she volunteers for Gravenhurst Against Property on their marketing and communications working group preparing their monthly newsletter. Sandra  co-founded Spark Muskoka, a group dedicated to honouring the community – their work, their history, their experience and their awesomeness.

Sandra Holdsworth

Susan Palijan
Milton, Ontario

Susan is a caregiver, researcher, and lifelong learner. Since 2015, she has been active in local, provincial and national organizations that promote the inclusion of caregiver partners in the health system. This includes being a Patient and Family Advisor with Halton Healthcare, co-chair of Halton Healthcare’s Patient and Family Advisory Council (PFAC), member of Connected Care Halton’s Ontario Health Team PFAC, member of the Ontario Minister of Health’s PFAC and an advisor for Ontario Health atHome. She is an active volunteer with the Ontario Caregiver Organization and member of the Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence’s Caregivers CAN Advisory Network.

Susan has nearly 20 years of research, evaluation and strategic policy experience in the education, health, and social services sectors. This includes senior advisory and leadership roles in the provincial and regional/municipal government levels. She is skilled in strategic planning, project management, research, program evaluation and stakeholder engagement. Susan is a Credentialed Evaluator and Prosci Change Management Practitioner. She is currently a PhD student in a health systems research program at the University of Toronto. Her research focus is on the experiences and well-being of family caregivers of relatives with mental and substance use disorders.

Susan re-joined the PAN Board in November 2024.

Sandra Holdsworth

Rob Wells
Ottawa, Ontario

Rob Wells is a Newfoundlander living in Ottawa. He began his Patient Partner journey in 2021, shortly after two major surgical operations and the acceptance of living with a chronic disease. He is a member of the Patient and Public Advisory Council of NL Support, and the AI4PH Community Advisory Board and also holds an individual membership with Digital Health Canada.

Rob is actively involved with a number of knowledge synthesis projects with a focus on digital interventions to support cardiac patients in their recovery. Most recently, he has become an active volunteer with the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. Rob retired from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2018, after 32 years in IT and Educational Technology leadership positions.

Rob is committed to contributing healthcare improvement in Canada and is particularly interested in the areas of Digital Health, Learning Health Systems, Health Data, and Patient Education.

Rob joined the PAN Board in 2025

Sandra Holdsworth

Simone McFee
Calgary, Alberta

Simone was born with the genetic illness cystic fibrosis (CF) and has been heavily involved in the healthcare system since childhood. After receiving a life-saving double lung transplant in 2019, Simone realized that her newfound energy and health provided her a unique opportunity: she would use her experience as a chronically ill/disabled patient, along with her new vitality, to advocate for disabled/chronically ill patients and meaningfully improve their experiences with healthcare services in Canada.
 
She began by advocating in British Columbia with her fellow peers with CF to fund the innovative medication Trikafta. After years advocating in front of politicians, medical professionals, and members of the public alike, Trikafta finally received funding and was made widely available to people with CF in April 2022. This medication alleviated the progressive and disabling symptoms of CF so profoundly that the average of a CF patient has skyrocketed in the last 7 years. 
 
She continued her journey by attending graduate school at the University of Calgary, obtaining her master’s degree in public policy with a focus on the barriers disabled Canadians experience when accessing disability income supports. Now, she works as a policy analyst with the government of Alberta, focusing on designing policies to improve the care and social supports for senior Albertans with disabilities who live in continuing care homes. 
 
Simone joined the PAN board in 2025. 

 

PAN Members Community Guidelines

We want everyone to feel welcome on our PAN community site, so we’ve created these guidelines to foster the community we would like to see. By joining and participating in our Community, you agree that you have read and will follow these guidelines.

Within the PAN Community site and in our dealings with each other through other PAN initiatives:

  1. Be respectful. We all have a shared goal of making healthcare better for Canadians. The PAN Community may include people you work with or may meet in future. As members of PAN, we demonstrate respect in our communication, sharing and crediting of resources/knowledge and  in our interactions with each other and stakeholders from outside the PAN.

 

  1. Focus on a positive and collaborative approach.  Let’s work together to build strong relationships so we can achieve great things. Diversity of thought and sharing of perspectives is healthy – we won’t all agree on everything, but we want to keep an open mind to consider new ideas and change.

 

  1. Do not discriminate or engage in harmful activity. We value different ideas and opinions but there is no place for any activity that could hurt someone, whether it’s physical, emotional, mental or digital. Racism, hateful language, or discrimination of any kind is not acceptable. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want everyone in the world to know about or that you wouldn’t want anyone to know that it came from you.

 

  1. Use your true identity. We made this community site private so that we can feel free to be ourselves. Each member is vetted by our team to ensure people are here for the right reasons. Communicating with each other is based on trust.

To ensure the PAN community remains a safe place for all members, we ask you that you contact hello@patientadvisors.ca if you encounter a situation where guidelines may have been breached. PAN reserves the right to suspend or terminate membership in the Community for anyone who violates these guidelines.

 

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Directives de la communauté des membres du PAN

Nous voulons que tout le monde se sente bienvenu sur notre site Web communautaire de PAN. Nous avons donc créé ces directives pour aider au développement de la communauté que nous aimerions voir. En rejoignant et en participant à notre communauté, vous acceptez de lire et de suivre ces directives.

Sur le site de Web de la communauté de PAN et dans nos relations mutuelles dans le cadre d'autres initiatives de PAN :

  1. Soyez respectueux. Nous partageons tous l'objectif d'améliorer les soins de santé pour les Canadiens. La communautéde PAN peut inclure des personnes avec lesquelles vous travaillez ou que vous pourriez rencontrer à l'avenir. En tant que membres de PAN, nous faisons preuve de respect dans notre communication, le partage et l'attribution de ressources/connaissances et dans nos interactions les uns avec les autres et avec les parties prenantes extérieures de
  2. Se concentrersur une approche positive et collaborative.  Travaillons ensemble pour construire des relations solides afin de réaliser de grandes choses. La diversité de pensée et le partage des perspectives sont sains - nous ne serons pas tous d'accord sur tout, mais nous voulons garder l'esprit ouvert pour envisager de nouvelles idées et des changements.
  3. Ne faites pas de discrimination et neparticipez pas à des activités nuisibles. Nous apprécions les idées et les opinions différentes, mais il n'y a pas de place pour les commentaires susceptibles de blesser quelqu'un, que ce soit physiquement, émotionnellement, mentalement ou numériquement. Le racisme, les propos haineux ou la discrimination sous quelque forme que ce soit ne sont pas acceptables. Ne publiez rien que vous ne voudriez pas que tout le monde sache ou dont vous ne voudriez pas que l'on sache qu'il vient de vous.
  4. Utilisez votre véritable identité. Nous avons rendu ce site Web communautaire privé afin que nous puissions nous sentir libres d'être nous-mêmes. Chaque membre est accepté manuellementpar notre équipe pour s'assurer qu'il est là pour les bonnes raisons. La communication entre nous est basée sur la confiance.

Pour s'assurer que la communauté de PAN reste un endroit sûr pour tous les membres, nous vous demandons de contacter hello@patientadvisors.ca  si vous rencontrez une situation où les directives ont été violées. PAN se réserve le droit de suspendre ou de résilier l'adhésion à la communauté de toute personne qui enfreint ces directives.

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Patient/Caregiver Partners (P/CPs) are people with lived/living experience of the health system as patients and/or caregivers committed to improving the health system. We use the term P/CP, however other groups use terms such as:
- patient advisor
- patient family advisor
- patient experience advisor
- patient partner
- patient public partner
- Person with lived/living experience (PWLLE or PWLE)

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