Joanne Thomsen

Vice President, Talent

Joanne Thomsen is the vice-president of talent at MaRS, where she leads the human resources function for MaRS Discovery District, and formerly for MaRS Innovation and the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine.
Joanne has over 20 years of human resource leadership experience in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Most recently, she was vice-president of human resources at Mash Media (formerly Empirical), an online and traditional marketing services company. Joanne has also worked at Bank of Montreal as a senior human resource business partner and consultant, aligning people strategy to business strategy. While at BMO she worked on two key strategic organization design initiatives across several lines of business in the private, personal and commercial, and technology and solutions pillars of the bank. Joanne also spent several years at the Toronto District School Board, working mainly in the area of labour relations.
Joanne is a Certified Human Resource Professional and has a bachelor of arts from Trent University. She is also a graduate of the California-based Coaches Training Institute’s Co-Active Coach Training and Co-Active Leadership Programs. Joanne is currently a student of the Three Fold Way, an integrated approach that considers body, mind and spirit in human transformation.
Contact: jthomsen@marsdd.com