Kwame McKenzie


Kwame Julius McKenzie is the CEO of Wellesley Institute, a policy think tank based in Toronto, Ontario. Born in the United Kingdom, McKenzie is a physician and full professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He has worked as physician, researcher, policy advisor, journalist and broadcaster.

Biography

McKenzie was born in Southall in West London to Vida Louise McKenzie and Arthur McKenzie who immigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in the late 1950s. He attended Villiers High School, London and then Southampton University Medical School.
McKenzie was appointed as the CEO of the Wellesley Institute in May of 2014.
He served as Chair of the Council of Canadian Academies’ panel on Mental Health and Medical Assistance in Dying, Chair of the Health Equity External Advisory Committee at and was appointed Commissioner at the Ontario Human Rights Commission in June 2016. He is also a Medical Director of Health Equity at CAMH, the Centre for Addition and Mental Health

Activist stances

In 2015, McKenzie announced an external review of the Family Gender Identity Clinic at CAMH after concerns were raised that the clinic's approach to gender identity therapy was outdated. Following this review of the clinic's practice, McKenzie announced that CAMH would be closing the clinic. CAMH later issued a settlement to the clinic's former director Dr. Kenneth Zucker and apologized that the external review erroneously described his interactions and was released without his review or comment. Despite these procedural oversights, CAMH stood by its decision to close the clinic.
McKenzie was a presenter on All in the Mind on BBC Radio 4, and has previously been a columnist for The Times and The Guardian newspapers in the UK, writing on issues of health, racism and equity, as well as being a frequent guest on Canadian radio and television.
In 2005 McKenzie wrote an article in The Times, UK about racial stereotyping in the 2005 film King Kong, co-written, produced, and directed by Peter Jackson. In the piece titled, , McKenzie described it as feeding "into all the colonial hysteria about black hyper-sexuality." The article received such a strong response from readers that McKenzie and The Times issued a challenge asking the public to find positive black images on television during the holiday season.

Awards