Debra Williams
Secretary

My Story

Debra Williams is an accountability professional, performance strategist, mentor, and empowerment coach who has been working in senior management for 14 years. She grew up in a Caribbean household, moving from Jamaica to Canada in the 1970s. Debra attended universities in the United States, where she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees while working on equity initiatives in environmental conservation and regulatory compliance. She returned to Ontario to pursue a career with the City of Toronto’s Auditor General’s Office as an Audit Manager, where she became certified as a fraud examiner and certified government auditing professional.

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Her 17-year career with the city included two years as the Director of Program Support at Social Development, Finance and Administration, and nine as the Director of Performance and Standards at Toronto Public Health. In addition, as a private consultant, she worked with a child welfare agency to build capacity and professional development by designing a leadership mentoring program framework to facilitate professional opportunities for underserved African Canadian Staff. This work helped to embed principles from the diversity and inclusion race equity action goals developed by the One Vision One Voice initiative. She recently joined Strides Toronto as the Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.