Entrepreneurial team
By Jennifer Parraga, BA'93
The most important public health concerns can only be addressed and resolved with teams of health professionals working together.
It’s a basic principle that is central to Western’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program and one of the biggest learnings for three MPH alumni Mark Gera, Ian Hanney and Nitin Mohan.
It has also become central to the company that the three entrepreneurs have formed which provides public health consultation to industry and business clients.
With backgrounds in health sciences, medicine and health geography, Gera, Hanney and Mohan had unique journeys to the MPH Program. They did share one thing in common - a desire to improve the health and wellbeing of people in their local and global communities. Each was inspired to further explore their interests through Western’s MPH program.
The 12-month, case-based program is unique in Canada and emphasizes working in learning teams throughout the entirety of the yearlong program. At the beginning of each academic year, the Class is divided into learning teams and each team is assigned a supervisor. Each member of the learning team has a different background and members learn by working together on cases throughout the year.
As Gera explained, the learning teams are meant to be representative of the real world, where you are creating relationships and building lifelong partnerships with classmates and your faculty members.
The three alumni took their positive experiences from the learning teams, as well as informed decision-making and out-of-the-box thinking with them as they began planning what would become a public health consultancy firm.
It was about halfway through the Program that the three classmates started discussing how they could use their newly learned skills to make an impact on the world. They did a scan of the industry to see what was currently available to organizations and after many iterations landed on their current format and their company, ETIO Public Health Consultants.
The company brings the learnings and core competencies of public health to broader industries. With their company rooted in evidence-informed decision-making, they have fully adopted the team approach and are equal partners who collaborate on all clients.
Their clients range from cannabis companies, the food industry to health units and just about everything in between.
The young alumni are grateful for the learning from the MPH program, which is helping them each and every day with their clients and the continued mentorship from the Program faculty.
“Dr. Thind helped guide us in our initial phase when ETIO was very much an idea,” said Mohan. “Through his mentorship, we were able to understand how best to turn our vision into a reality, whether it was advice or connecting us to his vast network, his guidance has been invaluable to our progress.”
The three are also very grateful to Amanda Terry,
“Professor McKinley who was our social-cultural determinants of health teacher helped us to build the groundwork of what ETIO would become,” added Gera. “We relied on Professor’s Terry’s teachings in leadership during the startup phase of our firm.”
With their new company growing and their networks expanding, the three still remain very close to their class and all agree that these lasting relationships positively affect their growth personally and professionally.
