Alan Ruddiman
Rural Generalist Physician & Co-Chair
Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues

Alan is an internationally trained rural generalist physician and a recent Past President of Doctors of BC. He lives and works in Oliver, BC, on the traditional lands and territories of the Syilx / Okanagan First Nations. Born in Scotland, Alan’s formative years were spent in South Africa. He earned his medical degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in the late 1980s. It was during these years that he acquired strong values on social justice and medical professionalism. As a passionate advocate and voice on rural health care, medical professionalism and quality improvement, he is a recognized physician leader, a health care strategist, a health policy knowledge expert, and a strong proponent for equity, and quality, in health care here in British Columbia and nationally.

Alan has served as the provincial co-chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues since 2014, and is a director of the Rural Coordination Centre of BC. He holds appointments on numerous strategic provincial health care leadership committees and working groups – including the Quality Forum Steering Committee, which he has been a member of for the past five years. In 2018, Alan was appointed to the Board of Directors of Institute for Health System Transformation and Sustainability, and in 2019, to the Provincial Digital Health Board.

He is a husband and father, an active kite surfer, a sailor and a curious traveler who tinkers with vintage Volkswagen buses in his spare time.

Claire Snyman
Patient Partner
Patient Voices Network

Claire Snyman is an author, speaker, blogger and advocate for patient and health care collaboration. She is passionate about inspiring people to put their health in their own hands. After being diagnosed in 2010 with a non-malignant brain tumor and having brain surgery in 2012, she realized the importance of partnering with her health care team and being her body’s own advocate. In her quest for collaboration between patients and health care teams, she has co-authored a collaborative study between patients and neurosurgeons at Johns Hopkins University. She then developed a TEAM Approach for Empowering patients^© – with the end goal of achieving better patient outcomes. Claire has spoken at TEDxStanleyPark 2018 on the subject of putting your health in your own hand. She is a TEDMED Frontline Scholar, a long-time volunteer with the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada and a member of the Canadian Medical Association’s Patient Voice. Claire speaks across North America on the role of patient activation and patient engagement in health care and continues to look for ways to increase communication and collaboration between patients and the health care system and improve the patient experience.

Jonathon Leipsic
Chairman, Department of Radiology
Providence Health Care

Jonathon is the Chairman of the Department of Radiology for Providence Health Care as well as Vice Chairman of Research for the Department of Radiology and Professor of Radiology and Cardiology at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Leipsic is also a Canada Research Chair in Advanced Cardiopulmonary Imaging. He recently has taken on the role of Medical Imaging Regional Department Head of Vancouver Coastal Health. Dr. Leipsic has over 415 peer reviewed manuscripts in press or in print, over 300 scientific abstracts and is editor of 2 textbooks. He speaks internationally on a number of cardiopulmonary imaging topics with over 150 invited lectures in the last 4 years and is Past President of the Society of Cardiovascular CT – the largest international society focused on cardiovascular CT.

Hardeep Chaggar
Executive Director, System Optimization
Fraser Health

A qualified accountant from the UK, Hardeep has grown his career across the globe in supply chair, operations excellence and organization redevelopment. Hardeep has led challenging and complex transformations at a senior level in a multitude of organizations, including GE, Smiths Aerospace, JP Morgan and Canadian Helicopters Corporation. Most recently, Hardeep’s key focus has been to lead innovation and transformation in the health care sector, currently as the Executive Director of System Optimization with Fraser Health. Throughout his career, Hardeep’s secret to successful outcomes in any change initiative has been leadership through empowerment and authentic partnership.

Hardeep is dedicated to serving the community. In 2012, he helped his wife establish a school that now provides a unique and safe learning environment for young children during their most important years. In 2013, he co-founded Supply Chain Executives Networking Exchange to mobilize creative change in supply chain through engagement with professionals, students and the community. In 2015, Hardeep helped form BizHacks at the University of British Columbia, with a vision of cross-faculty collaboration in solving real-work problems whilst development a platform for students to be better prepared for their careers. In this spare time, Hardeep loves to be an in-house DR for this children, resorting classic vehicles, learning and creating new things at every juncture of his life.