2024 Alumni Agent of Change
Suzanne Solven, BSc(Pharm)’87
With over 29 years of leadership experience across a broad range of organizations within BC’s healthcare system, Suzanne is a dynamic and strategic leader with a passion for health policy. She enjoys taking on challenges, applying critical thinking to produce innovative solutions, continuous learning, mentoring, and building teamwork and collaborative relationships to make a positive difference for British Columbians and the healthcare system.
Suzanne currently leads the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia as its registrar and CEO. In this role, she provides overall strategic and operational leadership, advises on health policy, and promotes and builds positive relationships with key partners to ensure the provision and access of safe and effective pharmacy care for British Columbians. Within two years of taking on the role of registrar and CEO, she has led the College to: increasing access to health care for British Columbians by working with key partners to quickly implement expanded scope of practice for pharmacists, which has resulted in over 300,000 patients accessing care for minor ailments; the removal of restrictions on pharmacists’ ability to adapt prescriptions; introducing a new Indigenous Cultural Safety, Cultural Humility and Anti-Racism practice standard in partnership with 13 other health regulatory colleges that sets clear expectations for healthcare professionals to provide culturally safe and anti-racist care for Indigenous peoples; updating and modernizing the College’s strategic plan, including a new commitment statement and new College values to better reflect current healthcare challenges and societal change; and expanding and building a new College management team that is agile and responsive to the fast-paced changes that are happening in BC’s healthcare system.
Before her current position at the College, Suzanne worked as the associate vice president of audit, investigations and quality assurance at Pacific Blue Cross. In this role, she provided strategic and operational leadership for both the fraud investigations and the internal audit branches of the organization in addition to being the interim chief risk officer during a time of transformation. Recognizing the need to utilize a strategic approach to addressing healthcare fraud, Suzanne developed and implemented a five-year fraud strategy that led to significantly increasing the organization’s positive return on investment, considerably strengthening the identification and recovery of fraudulent monies back to clients thus improving much-needed access to healthcare for its patient members.
Suzanne previously served as the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia deputy registrar for over nine years. As deputy registrar, Suzanne led the development of several public safety initiatives such as the award-winning DrugSafeBC Initiative; implemented significant changes to the pharmacy ownership provisions in BC’s pharmacy legislation that ensure greater transparency and accountability; directed successful undercover pharmacy investigations that led to an unprecedented number of pharmacy closures for unsafe and non-compliant practice; and managed a successful collaboration with the US Food and Drug Administration that stopped a BC pharmacy from exporting counterfeit medications into the US.
Suzanne also spent 13 years working with the Government of British Columbia as both executive director and senior pharmacist of the BC PharmaCare program. In her roles, she led and/or contributed to the first-time development of inter-professional drug policy initiatives that ensure drug plan sustainability, such as evidence-based drug review processes, low-cost alternative drug program, reference drug program, limited-use drug coverage, drug special authorization processes, development of drug coverage expert advisory committees, and negotiating and developing standardized product listing agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers for accountable drug coverage. She was also a provincial partner in the development of the Common Drug Review and the National Pharmaceuticals Strategy.
Suzanne is currently a member of the Alumni UBC Advisory Council and UBC Therapeutics Initiative Oversight Committee, past member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC Prescription Review Panel, past co-chair of the National Pharmaceuticals Strategy, and past chair of the Advisory Committee on Pharmaceuticals, Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health.
2024 Alumni Future Agent of Change
Dr. Sumreen Javed, PhD’22
Dr. Sumreen Javed's academic journey began with a doctor of pharmacy degree from Pakistan. She transitioned into the research world and earned a master's degree at the University of Northern British Columbia before pursuing a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences at UBC, focusing on breast cancer metastasis under the supervision of Dr. Karla Williams.
During her PhD, Dr. Javed made groundbreaking discoveries unraveling the mechanisms of tumor cells movement utilizing 3D spheroids, chicken embryo and mice models. Her research is published in esteemed journals such as Nature’s Scientific Report, iScience, and Science Advances. After her PhD, she joined Harvard Medical School where she investigated the effect of cancer immunotherapy, CAR T-cell, on the quality of life of cancer patients. She also successfully obtained her Canadian pharmacist license, showcasing her dedication to academic and clinical excellence.
Throughout her academic journey, Dr. Javed has assumed various leadership roles including serving as the president of the Faculty's Graduate Student Society, co-leading the Molecular and System Pharmacology group, and co-chairing the Graduate Symposium Planning Committee. These roles have allowed her to spearhead initiatives that promote student well-being and professional development.
Beyond her research endeavors, she passionately advocates for awareness and prevention of breast cancer through leading workshops emphasizing the importance of early detection and prevention strategies, particularly within immigrant and minority communities. Her efforts have garnered recognition within her community, including the prestigious 2020 Muslim Achieving Excellence Award and the 2023 Rising Muslimah Award.
Remarkably, Dr. Javed as a female Muslim scientist from an underserved science group herself is determined to break barriers and give back to her community. She recently launched ScholarCAN to support prospective graduate students interested in pursuing STEM masters and PhD programs in Canada.
Recently, Dr. Sumreen Javed joined CancerCare Manitoba to contribute to clinical patient care. With her extensive background in oncology research and clinical expertise, she looks forward to making a meaningful impact on the well-being of Manitobans especially as the province initiates the launch of CAR T-cell therapy.