Bev is a health research system leader with experience in practice and academia and a commitment to their integration. She has more than two decades of experience in the funding, production and use of research evidence to improve health.

Working in the field of health and risk communication, Bev championed stakeholder involvement and sees it as key to bringing evidence into practice. Her doctoral degree focused on knowledge translation: the use of research evidence to improve health and health care. Her academic studies fueled her passion for “evidence on evidence use” and she continues to contribute to this body of knowledge, while learning from and applying it.

Bev chairs and sits on various research advisory groups across Canada and internationally, serves as an associate editor at Implementation Science Communications and represents her organization in the National Alliance of Provincial Health Research Organizations. She is an adjunct professor at SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences and UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and she holds a Chartered Director designation from the Degroote School of Business Directors College at McMaster University.

Bev is an advisor to funders interested in embracing their role as change agents to ensure citizens get maximum benefit from research investments. She publishes on and speaks about the importance of research systems, and the need for all stakeholder groups to play their part in the generation and use of knowledge to improve health and health care. In all this work, her intent is to be respectfully – but insistently – provocative.

As President & CEO of Michael Smith Health Research BC, Bev feels privileged to work with an outstanding Board, leadership team and staff group, and is committed to bringing evidence to her organization’s own practices towards strengthening British Columbia’s health research system.

Bev was previously the CEO of Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and has held a number of management positions in non-profit agencies. She received her MA and PhD from SFU’s School of Communication. Her research interests are knowledge translation, discourse analysis, health and risk communication, and public involvement in health research.

Bev and her partner have four children and two grandchildren (so far); they love swimming, cryptic crosswords and spending time outdoors with their family on the lands where they gratefully live, work, and play: the traditional unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) First Nations; the traditional, unceded territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, and the traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq people.