Carmen is the founder and Managing Director of WindReach Consulting Services Inc. an Ottawa-based consultancy specializing in public sector accountability. For over twenty-five years, Carmen has been advising senior government leaders on public sector oversight and operational excellence. Her areas of specialty include governance, risk management and internal audit.  The scope of her career has touched virtually all functions of government, although her professional emphasis is on organizations mandated with the advancement of knowledge and the protection of the public interest.

Carmen is deeply committed to building public trust, which she does through her professional practice and her board work. She is currently a member of the Board for Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (AECL) where she is a member of the Audit Committee and the Chair of the Human Resources and Governance Committee. She is an elected Public Director of the Board for Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) where she is also a member of the Audit Committee. She also proudly serves on the Board and Strategy and Governance Committee of the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health. She is a former member of the Board for Immigrant Women Services Ottawa (IWSO) as well as the past Chair of the National Board for the Institute of Internal Auditors Canada.

Carmen is a Chartered Director (C.Dir.), a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) and holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree from McGill as well as a Master of Arts Degree in Public Administration from Carleton University.

Carmen and her husband Aaron live in Ottawa and are proud parents of three great kids.

As the Assistant Vice President Gary Askin provides strategic direction and day to day leadership to the Fraud Risk Management function across Canadian customer service processes, to develop detection, prevention and investigation capabilities.

The team within Operations works in partnership with internal business areas and external stakeholders such as clients, group plan members, plan sponsors, industry associations and police services to combat fraud.

Gary has been with Sun Life since September 2014 and has brought 33 years of experience from his former role as a Commander of Strategic and Tactical services with the Waterloo Regional Police Service-where he investigated and lead drug, organized crime, terrorism, intelligence and hate crime teams and investigations.

Nicole is a Director in the Risk Advisory Practice at Deloitte.  Her passion is enabling processes (financial management, procurement, materiel management, pay administration and grants and contribution administration) in the public service, especially the Federal Government. Her focus in on risk and controls; specifically, putting in place risk-based approaches to financial business processes, assessing internal controls and performing internal audits.  For the past 15+ years, Nicole has led several projects for a number of departments including Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Canada Border Services Agency, Treasury Board Secretariat, Department of National Defence, Court Administrative Services and National Research Council.  Prior to joining Deloitte, she was the Controller and Chief Financial Officer of a private company in Ottawa where she led projects in financial management, regulatory compliance review and implementation as well as audit preparedness.

Darren Budd has been a co-owner of Orbis Risk Consulting since 2012. Orbis has been providing risk and financial management consulting, audit,  organizational improvement and indigenous government services to public sector, indigenous and non-profit clients across Canada for over 16 years.

As a CPA, Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Information Systems Auditor, Darren offers his clients a broad expertise and over 15 years of experience focusing on the delivery of assurance, risk and control assessment, and process improvement services to all levels of government and the broader public sector. He is a frequent speaker at conferences on topics related to risk and controls, and is an aspiring golfer.

Alex is a Senior Manager within PwC’s One Analytics Team. Alex is a Finance Professional with 6+ years of experience in applying data analytics solutions, advising over 30 different data analytics and transformation projects. Alex’s experience includes 3 years as an analytics auditor where he performed data driven analysis to assess financial statements and controls performance. Currently, Alex specializes in leveraging tools to evaluate end-to-end processes for inefficiencies, risks, and subsequent opportunities to address existing gaps.

Nina Grimes CPA, CA, CISA, CIA, CRMA is a partner in the Ottawa office of the Deloitte Risk Advisory practice. Nina is also the Regional Marketplace Leader for Risk Advisory in Quebec and the National Capital Region.  She brings over 20 years of experience and focuses her time on audit and consulting related to internal controls: including business cycle controls, general computer controls and entity level controls, particularly within complex computer environments. Nina brings substantial experience with CEO/CFO Certification, including compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act and Bill 52-109. Her involvement with CEO/CFO certification has included working with management to identity, document and assess internal controls over financial reporting and financial management and working with organizations to rationalize controls and to implement sustainment strategies. Nina is also responsible for performing general IT control reviews and applying the Deloitte audit methodology in support of financial statement and/or internal control audits (SOC audits) for clients with more complex IT environments.  Nina is also experienced in internal audit, enterprise risk management, system under development audits and controls within system implementations.

Marc-Antoine holds an honours bachelor of commerce degree with a specialization in accounting from the University of Ottawa and has over 8 years of experience in a variety of fields, including internal audit, enterprise risk management, compliance audit, internal controls, and financial management. He conducted engagements in both the public and private sector working with the federal government and in the consulting industry. He is a Certified Internal Auditor (CIA), holds a Certification in Risk Management Assurance (CRMA) and a Post-Crisis Leadership Certificate from the University of South Florida. Marc-Antoine first worked in the public service at Environment Canada and the Treasury Board Secretariat, after which he spent more than 6 years as a consultant. He came back in the Public Service in 2021 by joining the CRA Audit Evaluation and Risk Branch (AERB). In June 2022, he became Assistant Director for IT, Security, and Emerging Technology Audit within AERB.

Outside of work, Marc-Antoine is an avid runner as well as being the Program Co-Chair on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Internal Auditors Ottawa Chapter.

Alec Keyes is the Acting Assistant Director of the Risk Management Centre of Expertise within the Canada Revenue Agency, where he is focused on supporting the Agency in understanding both the risks it faces and how to mitigate them. Alec has been with the CRA since 2019, prior to that he spent several years working as a Consultant in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice. Outside of work Alec enjoys playing golf, hockey and volleyball.

Monia is the Assistant Comptroller General for the Financial Management Sector within the Office of the Comptroller General (OCG). She is responsible for public accounts, community development and for government-wide policy related to financial management, transfer payments, costing, and charging. She is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and holds a master’s degree in public administration.

Over the past 28 years, Monia has worked in all areas of financial management and on large transformational projects. Prior to taking on her role at the OCG, she held the position of Assistant Chief Statistician, Corporate Strategy and Management Field/Chief Financial Officer at Statistics Canada, where she was responsible for a broad range of services, including financial management, human resources, workforce and workplace modernization, strategic planning, and corporate governance.

John is a governance and financial management consultant of mixed Métis and settler heritage. He helps Indigenous governments with their governance and management practices. He is founding partner of Orbis Risk Consulting, an Ottawa based firm.

Brian McKenna is the manager of a team of data analysts that use technology to help assurance providers across government do their jobs more effectively. Throughout his career he has worked at a number of large departments including Department of Justice and Department of National Defence. To date he has used data analytics to identify over $110 million worth of cost savings / cost avoidance for the Government of Canada and hopes to reach a billion by retirement.

Nina Ramful has over 20 years of experience in the Federal Government working as a Financial Officer in Revenue and Costing, Financial Policy, Public Accounts, Risk Management and Recipient Audits. She joined Employment Social Development Canada as a Senior Program Advisor in 2018 to develop and implement Capacity Assessment, an innovative and collaborative tool to assess organizational capacity within Indigenous Organizations. Following this successful project, she has been working on the new Program, Recipient and Project risk assessment processes for the Department.

Isabelle is an agile, trusted and well-rounded professional with diversified qualifications and experience. With over 14 years of experience, she specialized in projects related to digital enablement, internal controls over financial reporting, internal audits, financial risk management and information technology general controls for publicly traded clients, Federal Government departments and private sector clients. Also one of PwC’s digital accelerators, she helps create and spread the ripple effect of the use of new technology and tools internally and with her clients. She’s committed to delivering the most impact by helping her clients optimize their internal controls and business processes as well as assisting them with their digital journey.

Having begun his career in the Federal Government as a program officer managing grants and contributions (Gs&Cs) agreements, Richard joined ESDC in 2009 and has since been working on the operationalization of Gs&Cs policy. This work, in response to an audit recommendation in 2018, began to focus on the revision of ESDC’s Gs&Cs risk assessment process with the result being that new Program, Recipient and Project risk assessment processes were developed for the Department within the past three years.

Jane Whynot joined GGI as a partner in 2021 after finishing her doctoral studies at the University of Ottawa. Jane’s passion includes ensuring representations of diversity in performance stories which was heightened in the 20 year period she has been providing performance measurement and evaluation expertise to public and voluntary sector clients at national, provincial and local levels. Over these two decades, she has worked on over 75 applied research and evaluation projects.

Jane is an experienced evaluator and researcher, with particular expertise in qualitative approaches to complexity, theory-based evaluation and GBA+ and brings these strengths together in her work as a contract instructor at Carleton University. Jane is able to communicate effectively with clients to ensure that their needs are met and believes in open transparent communication to provide high quality products that are useful for decision-makers. She is actively involved in the domestic evaluation community serving as an editorial team member for the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (CJPE) and as a judge for the Canadian Evaluation Society’s Educational Fund Student Case Competition. She was recognized by the Canadian Evaluation Society in 2020 with the National Service to the Society award, and in 2021 with the Karl Boudreault award for Leadership in Evaluation.

Jane holds a Masters of Assessment and Evaluation (MAE) from the University of Melbourne, as well as a graduate certificate in Policy and Program Evaluation (DPE) from Carleton University.