Community Mobilizer

**Work Type: Full Time Community Mobilizer**

Home to seven regional programs and comprehensive health-care services, Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN, pronounced wren) is committed to meeting the current and emerging needs in Waterloo-Wellington and beyond.

WRHN is redefining the health-care experience through collaboration and innovation, addressing barriers to access, advancing care delivery, and setting new standards in compassionate, empowered community-driven health care.

At WRHN, every patient is at the centre of everything we do as we strive to improve lives, inspire healing, and build healthier, stronger communities. By listening to patients and partners, we strive to connect communities to the right care, at the right place, and at the right time.

**Please Note**:New employees must provide documentation/proof of COVID-19 vaccination status, a 2-step TB test, as well as proof of immunity to measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox) prior to their start date at Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN). New Employees will require clearance from Employee Health, Safety and Wellness before they are able to begin any position within WRHN.

**Position Summary**:

- The Waterloo Regional Health Network (WRHN) and the University of Waterloo are co-leading CareNext, a system transformation initiative that brings together healthcare, academia, community, and entrepreneurial sectors to design the future of health. CareNext bridges gaps between clinical care, research, policy, and technology to accelerate the development, testing, and adoption of high-impact healthcare innovations.
- Under the guidance of the Vice President of Innovation and Chief Health Innovation Officer, and reporting to the Director of Innovation, the Community Mobilizer will play a critical role in activating the region’s innovation ecosystem. This includes building relationships and fostering alignment between clinicians, community partners, researchers, technologists, policy experts, and emerging 7.0entrepreneurs.
- This first-of-its-kind role is both strategic and connective—designed to uncover unmet needs, surface barriers to innovation, identify opportunities for new professions and policy reform, and facilitate breakthrough collaborations. The Community Mobiliser will coordinate targeted, high-value initiatives to demonstrate the impact of innovation in practice and will help translate local success stories into models for system-wide adoption.

**Responsibilities**:
**Impact & Influence**
- Plan and coordinate inclusive, equity-rooted innovation events, workshops, showcases, and community roundtables.
- Represent CareNext at regional engagements and liaise regularly with health and academic stakeholders.
- Lead targeted innovation initiatives that test new ways of working and create feedback loops between clinical needs, research, and solution design.
- Surface insights and unmet needs that inform innovation strategy and contribute to identifying new workforce roles and emerging professions.
- Support storytelling and knowledge mobilisation that highlight early wins, amplify community voices, and demonstrate real-world impact.

**Partnership Development**
- Cultivate strong, trusted relationships across WRHN, the University of Waterloo, Communitech, and a wide range of start-ups, funders, policymakers, and community organisations.
- Act as a connector and translator between sectors—aligning entrepreneurs and researchers with clinical and operational challenges.
- Contribute to an evolving innovation map that tracks regional assets, strategic interests, and opportunities for alignment.
- Help facilitate co-development partnerships that lead to new care models, technologies, and policy recommendations.

**Innovation Enablement**
- Maintain a regional innovation ecosystem map—capturing partners, projects, insights, and opportunities.
- Work closely with UW faculty and CareNext innovation staff to evaluate solutions, assess policy and regulatory implications, and support scale.
- Support the identification of regulatory and policy barriers to innovation and co-develop strategies to address them, including policy briefs, roundtables, or demonstration projects.
- Champion the use of digital engagement tools (e.g., Slack, Notion, Miro, social platforms) to foster ongoing collaboration and visibility.
- **Workforce & Policy Innovation**
- Identify opportunities for the creation or redesign of health and innovation-adjacent professions (e.g., clinical UX designers, AI integration specialists).
- Collaborate with UW and WRHN partners to surface required upskilling pathways, training programmes, and interprofessional learning environments.
- Ensure that innovation efforts are inclusive of community-based knowledge and lived experience, and that system transformation reflects diverse needs.

**Position Requirements**:

- Bachelor’s degree in related field
- Minimum 5 years of relevant experience
- Background in health, social