Management · Healthcare · Digital transformation

Calm counsel for complex health systems.

Twenty years of leadership where clinical operations meets digital strategy. From $250M capital programs to province-wide virtual care: ambition, turned into something that actually opens.

20+years in health system leadership
$400M+in capital programs led
1.5Mvirtual visits scaled annually
95Kproviders on platforms delivered

We did not name the building. The kʷikʷəƛ̓əm First Nation gifted it a name: Red Fish.

Riverview Lands · 2021

Partnership that reaches the front of a building is a different thing from consultation that reaches the appendix of a report. That difference is most of the job.

The Principal

I started as an Occupational Therapist.

That clinical foundation remains the single most important differentiator in this practice.

Brain injury rehabilitation and palliative care were the first wards I worked on. I see every system through the eyes of the people inside it, whether patients, families, or the clinicians carrying the workload.

Over twenty years that lens carried me from managing children's rehabilitation programs to directing the clinical build of the $250M Red Fish Healing Centre, leading provincial digital health portfolios at PHSA, shaping national practice standards with the Rick Hansen Institute, and stewarding a $150M academic capital project at UBC.

AIR Consulting exists because health organizations rarely lack ambition. What they need is the stewardship layer between vision and delivery: governance that works, and a decision tracker that people actually open. Indigenous cultural safety is treated here as structural, not interpersonal.

Occupational Therapist by training San'yas Indigenous Cultural Safety certified Prosci / ADKAR change practice Product & portfolio leadership Former Board President, Anxiety BC

Amir is that mix of strategic genius and great human being. He's the kind of leader you learn from, and any team would be lucky to have him.

Neel Majumder Digital Health Product Leader · reported to Amir at PHSA
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Amir Rasheed, Principal of AIR Consulting
Amir Rasheed · Vancouver, BC
Services

What I actually do.

Every engagement blends strategy with operational reality: clear governance, and outcomes somebody is accountable for.

Management Consulting

Strategy, governance, and organizational transformation for public and private organizations.

  • Governance design and executive advisory
  • Strategic planning and facilitation
  • Change management (Prosci / ADKAR)
  • Business cases and funding justification
  • Portfolio oversight and project rescue

Healthcare Transformation

Clinical service redesign and capital projects grounded in evidence and co-design.

  • Capital project clinical leadership
  • Models of care and service redesign
  • Operational readiness and commissioning
  • Quality improvement and accreditation
  • Indigenous cultural safety, embedded structurally

Digital Health & AI Advisory

Digital strategy, AI enablement, and product leadership that serves clinical needs rather than dictating them.

  • Digital health strategy and roadmaps
  • AI strategy, governance, and safe clinical adoption
  • AI-enabled clinical decision support and workflow design
  • Product operating models and teams
  • Virtual care design and scaling
  • Data and analytics leadership
  • Procurement and vendor advisory

How engagements run

Joining mid-flight or shaping the work from the first conversation. Either way the goal is speed to value: understand the context fast, name the real problem, stay honest about trade-offs.

Four shapes an engagement takes. Most begin as one and end as another.
EngagementWhat it looks likeWhen it fits
Strategic Advisory Senior counsel for executives on strategy, governance, funding, and system alignment. Briefings, options analysis, and decision support. You have a decision to make and need counsel that holds up in the room.
Operational Leadership Hands-on leadership that builds the operating structures, processes, and decision rights that make delivery transparent and accountable. The work needs an experienced hand before a permanent structure exists.
Project Acceleration Re-establishing governance, restarting approvals, rebuilding stakeholder trust, and recovering velocity without losing the outcome. Approvals have stalled and trust needs rebuilding.
Facilitation & Co-Design Structured engagement across federated partners: steering committees, Delphi processes, allocation frameworks, workshops. A contested question needs a fair process before it needs an answer.

Four things I will not trade away

01
People first

You implement systems with people, not to them. Change sticks when those affected shape the design.

02
Make it visible

You cannot govern what you cannot see. Decision trackers, portfolio views, and honest risk registers come standard.

03
Process before answers

On politically sensitive questions, people agree to a fair process before they will agree to an outcome.

04
Evidence plus structure

Evidence alone does not change systems. Policy, regulation, and governance are what make it stick.

Selected Projects

Work that moved systems.

Engagements and leadership roles across two decades. Each one opens: the challenge, the approach, and what changed.

Challenge

Replace an outdated facility with a new 105-bed tertiary mental health and substance use centre on the historically sensitive Riverview Lands, honouring In Plain Sight and the TRC Calls to Action, for the province's most complex patient population.

Approach

  • Clinical lead for the full program; co-chaired steering committee
  • kʷikʷəƛ̓əm First Nation as authentic decision-making partners
  • Authored the Model of Care; led operational readiness for 300+ staff
  • Values-based prioritization to recover cost escalations
  • $250M business case through Treasury Board

Outcomes

  • Opened on time and on budget
  • The Nation gifted the facility its name, "Red Fish"
  • Indigenous patients reported feeling welcomed, not institutionalized
  • 99% of value engineering recommendations approved

Challenge

Scale virtual care across a federated system of six health authorities during the pandemic, with a team that grew from 5 to 36 people, while regional partners viewed standardization as an infringement on their autonomy.

Approach

  • Chaired the provincial steering committee with equitable representation
  • Turned decision forums into shared learning sessions
  • Built a product-minded team: outcomes over outputs
  • Authored business cases securing $11M+ in provincial funding
  • Transitioned governance to a self-managing coalition

Outcomes

  • 1.5 million virtual visits annually
  • HealthHub stabilized for 95,000 providers
  • MyGuide LongCOVID launched for 18,600 patients
  • The most resistant health authority became an adopter

Challenge

Generative AI arrived faster than health systems could govern it. A provincial digital portfolio needed a path to adopt AI in clinical settings that was safe, private, clinically credible, and actually useful to providers, not a pilot that would stall at the demo stage.

Approach

  • Led AI and LLM strategy and governance across the digital portfolio
  • Applied LLMs to patient experience data on the HealthHub platform, turning free-text feedback into product insight
  • Set the roadmap for AI-enabled clinical decision support, sequenced through clinical governance
  • Anchored adoption in evaluation frameworks, privacy review, and clinician co-design

Outcomes

  • AI governance established for a $20M provincial digital portfolio
  • LLM-driven insights informing product decisions on a platform serving 95,000 providers
  • A clinically grounded AI roadmap that outlived the hype cycle

Challenge

In the final two years of a $25M Health Canada funding cycle, prove that translational spinal cord injury research was actually improving lives at the bedside, or risk the organization's future funding.

Approach

  • National patient survey to anchor priorities in lived experience
  • Knowledge Mobilization Network across six provincial rehab centres
  • Co-created the first national SCI standards with Accreditation Canada
  • Co-authored the SCI Rehab Atlas

Outcomes

  • 30% reduction in pressure injury incidence across sites
  • Standards embedded in national accreditation to this day
  • ROI of the $25M investment demonstrated through patient outcomes

Challenge

Re-launch a $150M academic building after its original $380M scope collapsed: governance had lapsed, decisions had no owners, and a politically sensitive space allocation question was blocking executive approvals.

Approach

  • Designed a three-body governance model with clear decision rights
  • Built a 72-item decision tracker as the project's operating system
  • Converted the allocation question into a transparent framework
  • Coordinated Musqueam engagement through established protocol

Outcomes

  • Governance functioning; settled questions stay settled
  • Executive approval pathway re-established and on track
  • Engagement plan reflects protocol rather than aspiration

Challenge

A small non-profit with limited resources needed to keep delivering trusted core services while pursuing a visionary digital mental health tool. The classic innovation versus standardization paradox.

Approach

  • Portfolio governance: ring-fenced core programs
  • Dedicated innovation stream with its own funding
  • Agile, milestone-based oversight with go/no-go gates

Outcomes

  • MindShift CBT launched and scaled into a globally adopted app
  • Core services stayed stable throughout
  • Proof that innovation and standardization can coexist

Challenge

Seniors were receiving inconsistent care, ending up in Emergency when community care would have served them better, and entering long-term care prematurely. The Executive needed a redesigned regional model of care.

Approach

  • Mapped workflows across emergency, acute, rehab, and community
  • Co-designed the model with seniors, families, and Indigenous leaders
  • Team-based care linking rehab professionals to primary care

Outcomes

  • Improved flow across the continuum and back to community
  • Reduced alternate-level-of-care days for frail seniors
  • Stronger coordination with primary care networks

Challenge

A seed-stage healthcare network, run by doctors and hospitals, needed senior advisory support to move from concept to demonstrated value: funding, credibility, and a first real-world proof point.

Approach

  • Strategic advisory on positioning and go-to-market in healthcare
  • Supported the initial funding round
  • Brokered relationships with health service providers and employers

Outcomes

  • Initial funding round supported
  • Pilot project secured with a health service provider and employer
Experience

Who I have worked for, and in what capacity

Two different things, listed separately on purpose. Most of the names below are employers, where the experience was earned. AIR Consulting's own client work is a shorter list, and it is labelled as such.

Leadership roles (employed)

Organizations where Amir held staff or executive leadership positions.

Provincial Health Services AuthorityDigital health portfolio · capital projects · virtual care
Director
University of British ColumbiaStrategic initiatives · $150M capital project stewardship
Current
Fraser Health AuthorityStrategic transformation · clinical redesign
Leadership
BC Mental Health & Substance Use ServicesRed Fish Healing Centre · clinical lead
Director
Rick Hansen InstituteNational best practice implementation
Leadership
Government of British ColumbiaCross-ministry service design · nine-ministry programs
Leadership
Anxiety BCGovernance oversight · MindShift CBT
Board President
Doctors of BC / ImpactBCPractice Support Program portfolio
Consulting

AIR Consulting engagements

Client work delivered through the practice. A short honest list beats a long ambiguous one.

Sector focus for new work: provincial digital health agencies, health technology ventures, post-secondary institutions, and First Nations health and social service design.

Voices

What colleagues and clients say

What clients and colleagues say about Amir's leadership.

Read these in full on Amir's LinkedIn profile.

Writing & Speaking

Writing and speaking

Publication

Spinal Cord Injury Rehab Atlas

Co-authored a national research synthesis on best practices in SCI rehabilitation, informing standards adopted across Canadian acute and rehab centres.

Conferences

National & provincial forums

Presented translational research and quality improvement work at national conferences, BC Quality Forums, and within IHI improvement networks.

In progress

Writing on system stewardship

Essays in progress on governance for capital projects, antifragile teams, safe AI adoption in clinical settings, and digital health that serves clinicians. Get in touch to be notified.

Fit Check

Is AIR the right fit for your work?

Describe a role, a project, or a set of requirements. This tool compares it against Amir's actual record and tells you where the fit is weak as readily as where it is strong. It will say "I don't know" when it does not know.

Paste a paragraph from a job description, name a challenge you are facing, or just ask a question.

Try one of these to start:

AIR Fit Assistant
Rule-based, grounded in Amir's record · not a chatbot with opinions

Conversations are logged so Amir can improve this tool. Please do not paste confidential or pre-public material.

Contact

Tell me about the work.

Most engagements begin with a short call to understand your context and the problem you are trying to solve. If the fit is right you will know quickly. If it is not, you will get an honest referral instead.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

You will get a reply within two business days. Your details are used to answer your inquiry and nothing else.

AIR Consulting operates from the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Cultural safety is structural, not just interpersonal, in this practice and on this land.