Alisa Y. Harrison, Ph.D.
Principal, alisa@aharrisonconsulting.com
Alisa Harrison (PhD Duke University ’08, MA University of British Columbia ’01) is an energetic leader, with a passion for enabling positive and strategic system change. She loves to solve complex problems, weaving evidence and experience together to help clients identify better ways to realize their goals. She is known for being both visionary and pragmatic, setting ambitious targets, and leading herself and others through the practical, incremental steps toward achievement. Informed by experience in health and community development, as well as scholarly studies of social justice, power relations, and mass democratic movements, she is deeply committed to the values of compassion, transparency and equity. She has demonstrated her skills at building the trusting, mutually valuable professional relationships necessary for success, whether the goal is to engage a constituency or audience, create and sustain partnerships, develop a rewarding workplace or healthy organization, or achieve specific project deliverables.
Alisa considers each project from multiple angles and works creatively to forge links between evidence and practice. Alisa has led projects for government, non-profit, and private sector organizations on topics including the continuum of care for eating disorders treatment; health, safety and quality of care standards for the practice of seclusion; best practice in inpatient psychiatric treatment; anti-racism, cultural competency and diversity training; adult education; immigration; information sharing and homelessness research; and aboriginal labour market programming. As part of her most recent work, Alisa has helped to develop and then overseen the implementation of new programming and practice to strengthen the primary care system in Victoria, such as new tools to improve communication between acute and community-based primary care, improved longitudinal primary care for frail seniors, and access to MSP-funded, low-barrier, evidence-based interventions for people with mild-moderate anxiety and depression.
With her work since 2010 focusing most closely on the public health sector, Alisa has collaborated with care providers, service users, system leaders and decision-makers, as well as community partners to improve access and quality, encourage evidence-informed practice, and create a safer, more sustainable health system. Most significantly, she has led the successful start-up of two non-profit health care organizations. In 2010-11 she led the development of an evidence-based service delivery model for the Looking Glass Foundation's Woodstone Residence, resulting in a multi-million dollar partnership agreement with the BC Government, and moved the new service through its initial staff recruitment and program-development phase. From 2012 through 2018, she was founding Executive Director of the Victoria Division of Family Practice (a partnership between the BC Ministry of Health and the Doctors of BC), where she was engaged by Victoria's family physicians to establish the organization from the ground-up and support physicians to organize their community. Alisa led the Division through six years of consistent growth, achieving measurable results in every area of the organization's strategic plan, and garnering widespread recognition within and beyond the sector.
Before coming to consulting, Alisa enjoyed five years as an instructor at the University of Victoria teaching History and Women's Studies, and she has recently joined Royal Roads University as Associate Faculty in the graduate program in Health Leadership. Alisa's experiences, interests and skills are broad as well as deep, and her fundamental curiosity means she is always open to new opportunities and challenges.
Alisa is a member of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) and Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL).
Alisa considers each project from multiple angles and works creatively to forge links between evidence and practice. Alisa has led projects for government, non-profit, and private sector organizations on topics including the continuum of care for eating disorders treatment; health, safety and quality of care standards for the practice of seclusion; best practice in inpatient psychiatric treatment; anti-racism, cultural competency and diversity training; adult education; immigration; information sharing and homelessness research; and aboriginal labour market programming. As part of her most recent work, Alisa has helped to develop and then overseen the implementation of new programming and practice to strengthen the primary care system in Victoria, such as new tools to improve communication between acute and community-based primary care, improved longitudinal primary care for frail seniors, and access to MSP-funded, low-barrier, evidence-based interventions for people with mild-moderate anxiety and depression.
With her work since 2010 focusing most closely on the public health sector, Alisa has collaborated with care providers, service users, system leaders and decision-makers, as well as community partners to improve access and quality, encourage evidence-informed practice, and create a safer, more sustainable health system. Most significantly, she has led the successful start-up of two non-profit health care organizations. In 2010-11 she led the development of an evidence-based service delivery model for the Looking Glass Foundation's Woodstone Residence, resulting in a multi-million dollar partnership agreement with the BC Government, and moved the new service through its initial staff recruitment and program-development phase. From 2012 through 2018, she was founding Executive Director of the Victoria Division of Family Practice (a partnership between the BC Ministry of Health and the Doctors of BC), where she was engaged by Victoria's family physicians to establish the organization from the ground-up and support physicians to organize their community. Alisa led the Division through six years of consistent growth, achieving measurable results in every area of the organization's strategic plan, and garnering widespread recognition within and beyond the sector.
Before coming to consulting, Alisa enjoyed five years as an instructor at the University of Victoria teaching History and Women's Studies, and she has recently joined Royal Roads University as Associate Faculty in the graduate program in Health Leadership. Alisa's experiences, interests and skills are broad as well as deep, and her fundamental curiosity means she is always open to new opportunities and challenges.
Alisa is a member of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) and Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL).
Dawn Nickel, Ph.D.
Senior Associate, dawn@aharrisonconsulting.com
Dawn Nickel (PhD University
of Alberta ’05) is an accomplished and resilient leader with over twenty years
of private and public sector experience developing and directing complex
research agendas and research programs; outstanding writing and editing skills;
and a strong academic background in social and health care policy. Dawn has extensive
experience in qualitative and mixed method research design and implementation
including best practice and other literature reviews, cross-jurisdictional
scans and stakeholder consultations (interviews, focus groups, surveys).
A strong proponent of evidence-informed policy and practice, examples of Dawn’s areas of content expertise include: end-of-life care; addictions and mental health; healthy aging; gender and caregiving; organizational behavior; employee engagement, knowledge workforce of the future; and change management. During her five-year tenure as Director of Research and Decision Support Services, Government of British Columbia, Dawn worked with approximately 200 public services clients to complete over 400 evidence-informed research products. Since leaving government, she has worked on a variety of projects, including the Age-Friendly Outcome Indicators Project (Public Health Agency of Canada) and Survey Scan of Native American Fall Prevention Programs (Centre of Excellence for Mobility, Fall Prevention and Injury in Aging), and she has contracted with the Victoria Division of Family Practice to design and manage a large survey of the family medicine community in the city of Victoria. As an associate with Alisa Harrison, Inc., she has been involved with work for the Resource Training Organization, the BC Ministry of Health – Mental Health and Substance Use Branch, and the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development.
A strong proponent of evidence-informed policy and practice, examples of Dawn’s areas of content expertise include: end-of-life care; addictions and mental health; healthy aging; gender and caregiving; organizational behavior; employee engagement, knowledge workforce of the future; and change management. During her five-year tenure as Director of Research and Decision Support Services, Government of British Columbia, Dawn worked with approximately 200 public services clients to complete over 400 evidence-informed research products. Since leaving government, she has worked on a variety of projects, including the Age-Friendly Outcome Indicators Project (Public Health Agency of Canada) and Survey Scan of Native American Fall Prevention Programs (Centre of Excellence for Mobility, Fall Prevention and Injury in Aging), and she has contracted with the Victoria Division of Family Practice to design and manage a large survey of the family medicine community in the city of Victoria. As an associate with Alisa Harrison, Inc., she has been involved with work for the Resource Training Organization, the BC Ministry of Health – Mental Health and Substance Use Branch, and the BC Ministry of Children and Family Development.
Contact us!
Find out how you can benefit from our expertise. E-mail alisa@aharrisonconsulting.com or
phone/text (250) 701-8634 to arrange a consultation.
Find out how you can benefit from our expertise. E-mail alisa@aharrisonconsulting.com or
phone/text (250) 701-8634 to arrange a consultation.
