This is Dr Karen Devon

Keynote Speaker

Associate Professor, Department of Surgery and Joint Center for Bioethics, University of Toronto

Dr Karen Devon is an Endocrine surgeon at Women’s College Hospital and the University Health Network in Toronto, Canada. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery and the Joint Center for Bioethics in the Dalla Lana school of Public Health at the University of Toronto. 

She completed medical school at McGill University and then entered the general surgery training program at U of T during which she completed a Masters’ Degree in Clinical Epidemiology. She then went to the University of Chicago for a fellowship in endocrine surgery as well as a fellowship in clinical ethics at the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. 

Since returning to Toronto in 2012 She has led the implementation of outpatient thyroid surgery and other innovations such as the world’s first parathyroid transplant. She is also the Medical Director of the Medical Assistance in Dying program at UHN and a founding member of the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario. 

Her most important and time consuming leadership role is as life planner, chef and travel consultant for her children aged 9, 7 and 6. She is currently learning her 6th language.