2024 IOG Board

Cassidy Caron is a Métis woman with roots in the historic Métis communities of Batoche and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. She grew up closely connected to her Métis traditions, heritage and culture and is driven by her family and community values of respect, honesty, collaboration and responsibility.

Cassidy is the first elected woman to hold the office of President of the Métis National Council, the recognized national and international representational organization of the Métis Nation. Cassidy is a Nation-builder. Utilizing the knowledge, skills and perspectives acquired through her formal education, professional and political experiences, as well as through her deep community involvement, Cassidy’s goal is to explore and utilize innovative approaches to community development and Nation-building, which promote effective collaboration.

As an entrepreneur prior to her current role, Cassidy has advised and evaluated both provincially and nationally administered programs that aim to serve and support Indigenous peoples and communities across Canada. She has also supported the development of policy, and the implementation of initiatives in, by and for Indigenous communities throughout Canada in a variety of sectors – all of which sought to achieve an overarching goal of restoring balance and wellness to Indigenous communities.

Janice Fischer is a Fortune 500 trained freelance transformational executive and board member who leverages an extensive career in technology to drive step-function improvement in revenue, profit, and customer benefits. With a BSc and a post-graduate Diploma of Business, she has over 20 years of global leadership experience in multi- billion-dollar business units across consulting, operations, technology services, software, cloud and sales at IBM. She leverages her expertise to enable organizations in Profit and Loss management, strategy, transformation, complex initiative leadership, governance, and effective relationship stewardship.

Recognized as an energetic and engaging leader, Janice solves complex business challenges to create and transform businesses. She is highly effective in leading global workforces to deliver on business goals, while achieving pace setting employee engagement results. She is also steeped in the disciplines of cyber-security, risk, and compliance. Since leaving IBM, she has led two boards through steep board renewal, enabling needed operational improvement within the organizations they support. She is excited to be applying her skills and the learnings from these efforts, as well as those from previous board governance roles, to support the Institute on Governance in achieving its strategic objectives.

Salman Azam has decades of senior leadership experience in business planning, technology, finance, corporate services, human resources, and labour relations. He joined Legal Aid BC in 2021, as the chief operating officer. As the lead of the Legal Operations Division, he is primarily responsible for the delivery of Intake and Referral Services, Parents Legal Centres, Lawyer Services, and Family Law Advice Services.

Prior to joining Legal Aid BC, he held several assistant deputy minister positions in the provincial government with a reputation for creative problem solving, sound fiscal management, excellent team building, and collaborations that supported cross-sector solutions. In addition to specialized leadership roles, Salman spent several years as the chief operating officer for the Independent Investigations Office of BC, where he was responsible for finance, human resources, information technology, public engagement, policy, training, and project management.