Jenn Thornhill Verma

Jenn Thornhill Verma joined the Board as a Community Representative in 2019 and was appointed as a voting director in June 2021. She is the CHSO designate and a member of the Governance and Nominating Committee.

Jenn has worked in the non-profit healthcare sector for over a decade. She is the Senior Director, Corporate Strategy and Development with the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, a non-profit working with healthcare leaders to make best practices more common. Jenn serves on a number of national health committees including the Advisory Council on Population Health (Canadian Institute for Health Information); the Policy Legal and Regulatory Affairs Advisory (Canadian Patient Safety Institute); the Quality Mental Health Care Network (Mental Health Commission of Canada and HealthCareCAN); and the Collaborative Healthcare Improvement Partnerships theme group (Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research).

Jenn is a University of King’s College alumnus, holding a Bachelor of Journalism Honours (2002) and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction (2019). She also holds a Master of Science (2007) in Applied Health Services Research from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Jenn’s background is in broadcast journalism and she recently returned to her reporting roots as a freelance reporter. In 2019, Jenn was a finalist for a National Magazine Award (category: Best New Magazine Writer) and an Atlantic Journalism Award (Best Profile). Her first book, “Cod Collapse: The Fall and Rise of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys” will be published in fall 2019 by Nimbus Publishing. Jenn is also a landscape painter, painting scenes of outport and coastal communities like the ones she remembers growing up.