Dr. Patricia Lingley-Pottie is co-founder, President and CEO of the Strongest Families Institute (SFI) in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She obtained her PhD. at Dalhousie University where she is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and a Scientist at the IWK Health Centre (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada).
SFI is a charitable organization and an evidence-based, educational mental health service delivery system designed to deliver care to children, youth and adults from a distance. Strongest Families was developed to help resolve the serious problem of access to effective intervention for moderate mental health conditions. SFI helps 13,000+ people annually and continues to scale. Dr. Lingley-Pottie is also co-founder of SFI’s sophisticated eHealth system, IRIS (Intelligent Research and Intervention Software). IRIS uses smart technology to provide a robust ehealth information management system with an interactive client interface and a fully interoperable app connecting to all if SFIs programs. IRIS also has a robust staff interface providing real-time data entry and reporting as well as workflow management.
Patricia strives to remove barriers for underserviced populations, those in challenging geographic locations, and the economically underprivileged. She is committed to continued research and innovation efforts to improve the health and well-being and timely mental health service access for Canadians and families living within and beyond Canadian borders. Under her leadership, SFI has had a five-fold increase in revenue, staff, and geographic distribution. Patricia has and continues to mentor staff who have advanced to leadership positions.
In addition to the 36 articles and editorials Dr. Lingley-Pottie has published, She has received national recognition for social innovation as the recipient of the 2012 Mental Health Commission of Canada Award, the 2013 Ernest C. Manning Award, the 2017 Governor General of Canada Innovation Award, the recipient of the 2018 Atlantic Business Magazine Top 50 CEO Award, the 2019 Champion of Mental Health Award (Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health), the 2020 Women Leaders in Digital Health (Digital Health Canada) the 2022 Dalhousie Aurum Award, the 2022 Council of the Federation (COF) Award for Innovation in Mental Health and Addictions Care, the 2022 eMhic Leadership Excellence International Award, the 2022 Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal (Nova Scotia), and the most recent 2024 Atlantic Business Magazine Top 50 CEO Award.
