After more than a six-month interim period, the Sunrise Health Region is moving ahead with plans to recruit a new chief executive officer.
The health region's first CEO, Joe Kirwan, departed suddenly on July 31 of last year. Senior VP of Health Services Suann Laurent was appointed interim CEO until a permanent replacement could be found.
"There were a number of major events we had in this past year that really required consistent and strong leadership," explains Sunrise board chair Greg Kobylka, "and the board really felt that this would be the best time for us to just sort of stabilize that. We had a flood clean-up issue, our capital planning, and our Phase 2 energy renovations portion of that."
With those projects behind it and others well underway, the board is taking advantage of the closest thing to a moment of calm it has seen.
"We re-looked at it along the way and just felt at this point that it was the right time to proceed for a full-time permanent position."
The region is now initiating a far-reaching internal and external search for candidates.
Suann Laurent will continue to lead the region in the meantime. The board hopes that her name will be among those it considers for the permanent position, notes Kobylka.
"We're very confident in her leadership, and we would hope and we've asked her to present as one of our candidates."
Laurent has made no comment concerning her plans.
