Krissy Doyle-Thomas

Early Life

Krissy Doyle-Thomas (née Doyle) is the third of four children born in Trinidad and Tobago to Eddison and June Doyle who migrated to Canada in 1990. Eddison Doyle was the first Black executive to hold the position of Chief Financial Officer and Vice President (Canada) at AT&T. Since 2016, he and his wife of 51 years, who is an author and motivational speaker, have split time between the Greater Toronto Area and Trinidad and Tobago where he is the Chief Executive Officer at Acropolis Medical Centre, a community-based state-of-the-art outpatient facility. (See also Caribbean Canadians.)

Krissy Doyle-Thomas’s interest in neuroscience grew after her younger sister, Eddie-Marie, was born prematurely and diagnosed with global developmental delay in early life. “We knew there would be complications with her development across time,” Doyle-Thomas said in a 2024 interview with Ron Fanfair. “We didn’t see that manifest until she began to grow and get older and miss developmental milestones, whether they may be motor, cognitive or intellectual.”

Education

Krissy Doyle-Thomas graduated from McMaster University in 2004 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology & Behavioural Neurosciences. She earned a Master of Science in Health Sciences two years later from the University of Calgary. McMaster University awarded her with a PhD in Medical Sciences in 2010.

Doyle-Thomas is also a certified trainer in LivingWorks safeTALK, which offers suicide prevention training.

Career

After completing her PhD, Krissy Doyle-Thomas accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Autism Research Centre in Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto. During her fellowship, she used Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate the brain’s structural and functional properties among patients with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). She also examined how these properties relate to clinical symptoms.

“During all of my studies, I have stayed within the brain,” she recounted to journalist Ron Fanfair in 2024. “My biggest interest is how the brain develops and how it looks in childhood-onset disabilities. I intended to research global developmental delay, but that was not a big research area at the time. So, I went into autism which is another type of developmental disability that is anchored in the brain to figure out if there are things I could learn within this field.”

In addition to brain development, Doyle-Thomas’s research interests include shaping and improving healthcare systems so that they address the needs of Canada’s culturally diverse populations.

Since August 2017, Doyle-Thomas has been a professor at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. She co-developed, teaches and is the program coordinator for Ontario’s first graduate certificate programs in Brain Disorders Management and Mental Health & Disability Management. As of 2024, she has also worked as Adjunct Scientist at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital.

Research

Krissy Doyle-Thomas is leading applied research at Mohawk College with the support of a Planning and Dissemination Grant (2023) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The project recognizes that there are inequities in the healthcare system and that Black Canadians face different challenges to accessing mental health services, including stigma, financial constraints, or lack of culturally sensitive care. Doyle-Thomas’s project involves Black community stakeholders and aims to advance inclusive mental health support for Black Canadians by creating a tailored psychoeducation program.

“Our system is very Eurocentric and defines care in one way whereas, in the Black community, we come from different countries, we have different practices and norms, we have different ways of defining family, and we have different barriers, even within the system,” she pointed out to Ron Fanfair in 2024. “We even have family structures that impact our ability to understand our symptoms to seek care and to even have culturally-sensitive care. If we are going to support the Black community, diagnosing and treatment must look like the Black community as opposed to saying we need to fit into a mainstream system that does not always do things that are in our best interest.”

Doyle-Thomas and Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou, Vice-President of Research and Director of the Bloorview Research Institute, are also co-investigators in a multi-million-dollar grant. The project aims to understand how genetic conditions can impact brain development in children and youth. This information can lead to improved diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Doyle-Thomas’s role is to lead a national survey and learn how this research should engage and address the concerns of communities that are marginalized or have been underrepresented in health research. In turn, this work will inform how medical professionals can inclusively engage with these communities and improve their research.

Organizational Involvement

Krissy Doyle-Thomas is on the advisory committee for the Health Research Council for People of African Descent (HRCPAD), which promotes Black health research in Canada. As a member of the advisory committee, she provides advice on research initiatives supported by the HRCPAD.

Personal Life and Family

Krissy Doyle-Thomas and her husband, Kwesi Thomas, who is an entrepreneur, were married in 2006. They have two sons.

Awards & Honours

Krissy Doyle-Thomas was featured in CBC’s HERstory in Black. This digital photo series profiled the stories of 150 Black women in celebration of Black History Month and Canada’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2017. Throughout her studies and career, Doyle-Thomas has received several awards, including:

• Frank Ramsay Award Graduate Award in Neuroscience, University of Calgary (2005)
• Everyday Hero Award, Mohawk College (2019)
• Honoree, 100 Accomplished Black Canadian Women, 100 ABC Women (2022)