Ron J. McKerlie

Emcee

RON J. MCKERLIE, MBA, F.I.C.B., ICD.D

Ron McKerlie is a senior executive with a distinguished record of improving transparency, accountability and performance in new, growing or underperforming organizations and a multifaceted 30+ year career spanning higher education, government, and the corporate world. He isskilled in working with Boards, recruiting, building, and coaching high performing teams, and sourcing and providing the tools for staff to deliver and excel. He isdedicated to advancing positive and inclusive cultures and known for ease in steering through transformative change and crises.

Ron currently serves as a Special Advisor to the Board of Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, where he is assisting on transition issues for the College’s new President. He undertook this role following 10 years of distinguished service as Mohawk College’s President and President of the Mohawk College Foundation. During his tenure, he hired and formed a new leadership team and Boards for both the College and Foundation, collaboratively built and delivered a new five-year plan for the College and separate plan for the Foundation with involvement from both Boards, and delivered record enrolments, financial surpluses, a #1 College ranking in the Greater Hamilton and Toronto Area, and record employee opinion results. 

He also secured the largest ever private donation to the College ($5M) and undertook the largest ever new capital program for new build and renovations at all four Hamilton area campuses, solidified the College’s commitment to cutting edge research through the inauguration of the Centre for Integrated and Advanced Medical Imaging, and advanced truth and reconciliation through the signing of an Indigenous Education Protocol and increasing Indigenous awareness and presence on campus. In recognition of his accomplishments, he was rated outstanding by both the College and Foundation Boards in each year of the job and was awarded the CICan 2024 Distinguished Service Award for “demonstrating outstanding and exemplary leadership at the institutional level, with stakeholders, the community, and other postsecondary education leaders.” 

Beyond his work with Mohawk’s Board and Foundation, Ron has been active in advancing the work of several other nonprofit and corporate organizations. He is currently the Chair of the Audit Committee for the College Employer Council, and a Director at ORION.  He previously served as Chair of Service Ontario, a Director at World Vision International (and Chair, Exec Search Committee), the Commissioner of the Niagara Parks Commission, a Chair of Service Ontario, Chair of World Vision Canada, and Chair of Mondex Canada Association.

Prior to his tenure at Mohawk College, Ron spent nine years in the government of Ontario.  As the Deputy Minister of the Open Government, he focused on operationalizing the government’s commitment to open government including accessible data and open information. In this role, he worked with 26 Ministries and countless agencies to put in place people, processes, procedures, plans and governance structures to ensure data sets and information held by ministries and agencies could be made available to the public at no cost and in consistent machine-readable format. Previously as Deputy Minister, Cabinet Office/Interim President and CEO, Ornge, Ron was tapped as part of a move by the government to replace the Board and senior leadership of Ontario’s Air Ambulance service, following a crisis of confidence. To address this situation, Ron put in place a transition team to restore investor and public confidence in a vital service, reviewed and revised procedures for both the hospital and aviation sides of the business, changed dispatch procedures, improved paramedic training, and refocused the organization on patient service.

Previously, as Deputy Minister, Ministry of Government Services, Associate Secretary of Cabinet, Centre for Leadership and Human Resource Management and Secretary of the Management Board of Cabinet, Ron led one of thelargest Ministries in Government (6,800 staff, $2.1B budget) with a multi-part mandate to: modernize human resources delivery, embed diversity principles within Government, modernize procurement practices, develop, plan, obtain funding and replace aging IT legacy systems, modernize the Archives of Ontario and champion and coordinate green practices across government.Ron began his government tenure as Corporate Chief Information, Information Technology Officer and Chief Strategist Service Delivery, where he was recruited to lead the modernization of the Information and Information Technology function within the Government of Ontario and create a world class service delivery strategy. His achievements in this role included consolidating IT infrastructure, reducing the cost of operations by $100M+/year, creating a new five-year strategy, and reorganizing operations resulting in new reporting relationships or jobs for 1K of almost 5K unionized workers. 

Ron’s corporate career included roles as a Vice President of eBusiness at Rogers Communications, a diversified Canadian communications and media company, and multiple roles across Bank of Montreal – one of the largest financial institutions across North America – in eBusiness, Smart Cards, and Electronic Banking Services. At Rogers, Ron’s accomplishments included launching the previously unattainable corporate eCommerce web site, within four months and under budget, generating over $4M/year in sales commissions and >8M online service transactions/year, and leading the Rogers.com site to ranking #1 among Telecom sites in Canada and #2 among 54 North American Telecom sites for both 2004 and 2003 by Customer Respect Group. 

Ron McKerlie earned theICD.D designation from Rotman School of Business at the University of Toronto and received his MBA from Dalhousie University. He also completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.  He lives in Burlington, Ontario with his wife and in his spare time enjoys traveling, having visited over 100 countries and all seven continents.