2025-2026 Award Judges

Jenny Barkan, ACC (Lead Judge)

I am Jenny Barkan and I am a certified business coach with almost 20 years of corporate world experience and more than seven years of coaching experience. My educational background is Law and Psychology & Management, but my passion always was to help people live better lives at and outside of work. That is why I received formal training as a Life and Business Coach at Erickson Coaching International Institute, Vancouver, and became a member of the International Coaching Federation.

I believe leaders play a crucial role in creating a healthy, engaging, motivating, and accommodating environment, whether they lead two or two thousand people. We spend long hours at work; therefore, how we are treated and feel about ourselves tremendously impacts all areas of our lives.
Thankfully, effective and emotionally intelligent leadership is a learned skill, and this is where my expertise and passion are.

Over the years, I developed close relationships with HRPA. I am an active member of the HRPA Speakers Bureau and was invited to deliver training to over half a dozen HRPA Chapters all over Ontario. I am also involved in a coaching community and serve as an awards judge within ICF Toronto Charter Chapter.
I am a big supporter of science-based coaching and often share the latest developments in neuroscience during my webinars and training.

In my spare time I am a devoted dog mom, a bit of a bookworm, and a wine lover.

Patricia Andraos, MBA, PCC

Patricia Andraos is an explorer – a multilingual, passionate world citizen who continually challenges herself to learn, experience and grow. As a Business Communication and Leadership Coach, she encourages leaders to do the same; believing strongly that a growth mindset is the key to success. Patricia is a BOLD and progressive strategic thinker, with over 20 years creating uniquely effective marketing communication strategies, leadership and employee engagement programs, and highly successful live corporate events for Fortune 500 companies in the pharmaceutical, automotive, technology, finance, and retail sectors, to name a few.

In her personal coaching practice, Patricia works with corporate leaders, sales teams, aspiring managers, and entrepreneurs to explore effective and engaging communication techniques for business and personal growth, instilling the confidence and skillset needed for success.

As Director of CX Coaching and Employee Enablement for Bond Brand Loyalty, a global Customer Experience Consultancy, Patricia works in partnership with Business Owners and CX Leaders, to design and deliver customized management & frontline coaching programs that will accelerate and support the creation of consistent transformational experiences across their customer journey. Patricia is an experienced business professional and certified coach who knows and understands Customer Experience fundamentals and how to use this understanding to support the development of Leaders and the engagement of individuals and teams to drive verifiable business results.

Patricia is excited to roll up her sleeves as Lead Judge this year and build a dynamic and professional team of judges who will be excited to dig into the award submissions that detail the unique contributions and impact our fellow coaches are making in the incredible work that they are doing.

Christine Nersisian - CHRL, ACPC, PCC, Executive Coach

With nearly 30 years of experience in Human Resources, leadership, and executive coaching, Christine brings a broad and strategic perspective developed across diverse industries, organizational cultures, and people-focused environments. Her experience spans large, complex organizations with more than 30,000 employees, as well as smaller organizations, across banking, energy, engineering, staffing, mental health, and economic development. 

Throughout her career, she has worked with executives, teams, and individuals to address organizational change, including performance, and strengthen organizational effectiveness. This work has given Christine a clear understanding of how coaching and people development contribute to individual growth, organizational effectiveness, and community outcomes. 

As an executive coach, she supports mid to senior leaders navigating complexity, leadership, career and life transitions by helping them build self-awareness, align decisions with their values, and move forward with clarity, authenticity and purpose. Her coaching approach is calm and safe, grounded in creating space for practical insight and sustained behavioral change. 

Christine is passionate about the difference coaching makes for individuals, organizations, and communities and look forward to contributing to the recognition of meaningful impact in this space.

Jill Kirson, PCC

I walk clients through a process to truly know and appreciate their strengths, clearly articulate their talents, identify and live their values while blasting through their fears and doubts. That is what working with me is all about. Holding people’s dreams and aspirations, I coach them to achieve and move themselves forward so they can live a fully engaged life both professionally and personally. My practice embodies a customized and holistic approach to career counselling, focusing on work/life balance, finding meaning in our lives and creating our own vision and path. I am known to be extremely caring and supportive while at the same time extremely knowledgeable of current work trends and very pragmatic.

A Certified Coach with doctoral-level education in counselling and diverse experience in all aspects of career management, executive coaching and leadership development with a caring heart and a professionally trained ear. A diverse career that has spanned industries and countries (USA and Canada primarily) with one common life long tenet: always encourage clients to live outside their comfort zone, embrace imperfect action and accept failure as a growth opportunity.

The formal roles I have filled include: coaching, counselling, recruiting, hiring, succession planning, developing high potential employees, program and people management and most recently entrepreneurship. A life long learner, I completed a certified coaching program with an expertise in coaching clients living with ADHD in 2016. My formal education includes an Ed.S. and M.A. in Community Counselling; MA in International Development and; a BA in Political Science. I have lived, studied and/or worked in four different countries and have travelled in both Africa and the Middle East.

John Tucker PhD ADHD Coach

John is an ADHD Coach in private practice. He coaches those in early adulthood who are having difficulty with schooling, transitions, addictions, relationships and sometimes all of these. The bulk of his practice involves helping family members cope with one another’s characteristics. These are strategic. He helps with understanding the limitations of the condition(s), cooperating, compromising and planning.

John is specifically trained to deal with ADHD. ADHD coaches understand the neurobiological condition which prevents ADHD folks from paying attention. They understand that a person with ADHD may be unable to stay on task regardless of how hard they try. Coaches strive to help clients appreciate their strengths and pay less attention to perceived weaknesses.

With 25 years as a teacher and a school principal with most of those spent, in some fashion, creating and modifying programs to accommodate diversity, and a PhD in education wherein he studied and wrote about students in transition, John is uniquely qualified to coach those having difficulty with post-secondary education.

Leanna Barwick

Leanna Barwick is a Toronto-based coach (PCC) and creative practitioner who designs and produces immersive events and experiential learning programs for personal and professional development. Leanna leads co-design process-oriented workshops that focus on organizational human system design and operational business system design; values based strategic visioning, planning and accountability; emotional, social, relational and creative intelligence capacity building, and collaborative skills training.

Leanna graduated from Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) University receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Design with honors (BDes, 2023) from the Digital Futures program, specializing in game development and user experience design, new media communications and emerging technology. Since graduating.

Leanna currently serves as President and Chair of the Board of Directors for Dames Making Games (DMG), an organization committed to exploring how our community of structurally marginalized artists, collectives, technologists, and DIY creators working in play – can change the systems that keep our voices out of tech and game spaces. Leanna is excited to participate as a jury member and support the ICF Toronto Annual Awards for the opportunity to witness and tap into the excellence, range and diversity of professional coaches across our community. In her time serving on the awards panel, Leanna hopes to bring fresh or unconventional perspectives that offer constructive insight, challenge the status quo and make space for the less heard from voices in professional coaching.

Morgan Toane, PCC

I support and challenge you and your group to engage with meaning as people and professionals.

Working with executives, people partners and functional business leaders, I help you address business challenges with talent practices in engagement, development and retention.

Specializations:
– Increase leader effectiveness, productivity and team engagement through leadership development.
– Accelerate culture change and business insight through employee engagement.
– Improve critical thinking, confidence and collaboration through individual and team Coaching.
– Enhance psychological safety, team engagement and wellbeing through emotional intelligence (EQ).

Rose Tam, PCC

Rose Tam, PCC, is passionate about organizational culture, leadership and the power of awareness through coaching. She partners with executives, managers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners, supporting them to broaden their thinking, challenge limiting assumptions, and pursue meaningful growth. 

In addition to her professional coaching practice, Rose has enjoyed contributing to the community through pro bono coaching with ICF Toronto in support of non-profit organizations. She is honoured to serve on this year’s ICF Toronto Awards Judging Panel and looks forward to recognizing the outstanding coaches whose work continue to make a lasting difference in the lives of individuals and teams.