Saskia Sivananthan

An Affiliate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University, and former Chief Research & KTE Officer at the Alzheimer Society of Canada, Dr. Sivananthan is an accomplished international strategy and policy advisor on dementia care. She is currently co-founder and CEO of the Brainwell Institute – a nonprofit dementia policy think tank.

She oversaw a tripling of the Alzheimer Society Research program funding, a dementia research priority setting leader and the only research funder who engages people living with dementia in all aspects of research. She is co-lead for the inaugural non-pharmacological interventions working group of the Canadian Consensus Guidelines on Dementia which developed the first Canadian recommendations on psycho-social interventions for the management and treatment of dementia.

She is a neuroscientist and health data scientist who has focused her work on dementia care.

In 2020, she was appointed by the Federal Minister of Health to the ministerial advisory board on dementia. Previously, Dr. Sivananthan served as a senior strategy and policy advisor consulting for the World Health Organization (WHO) on its overall global dementia strategy. Dr. Sivananthan co-drafted the WHO’s Global Action Plan on the Public Health Response to Dementia which was unanimously adopted at the 170th World Health Assembly by all 194 member-states. This plan served as the template for Canada's National Dementia Strategy. It identified key priorities and established international goals to fight stigma and advance dementia care.

Dr. Sivananthan earned her PhD from the University of British Columbia.