Helping leaders navigate organizational complexity
About Denaige McDonnell
Organizational Risk & Resilience Advisor
Helping leaders understand how systems shape risk, behaviour, and decision-making in complex environments.
A Systems-Level Perspective on Risk and Leadership
I am an organizational risk and resilience advisor with over 25 years of experience working across construction, oil and gas, manufacturing, healthcare, and government. My work focuses on helping leaders understand why systems fail, how risk accumulates over time, and what is required to redesign organizations so people and performance can hold under pressure.
How My Work Has Been Shaped
Over the course of my career, I have worked with organizations facing incidents, regulatory scrutiny, cultural breakdowns, and sustained operational strain. These experiences have reinforced a consistent pattern: organizational harm rarely results from a single failure. It emerges from misalignment across structure, leadership practices, incentives, and human capacity.
This understanding has shaped my focus on system-level risk, psychosocial hazards as organizational risks, and leadership decision-making under uncertainty. My role is not to introduce programs or prescribe solutions, but to help leaders see their systems more clearly and make decisions that are defensible, feasible, and sustainable.
What I Bring to the Work
My approach integrates systems-level risk analysis, psychosocial risk management aligned with Canadian and international standards, organizational culture and behaviour, governance and accountability structures, and executive sense-making in complex environments.
This integration allows me to support leadership teams navigating competing pressures, regulatory demands, and long-term risk exposure with judgment that holds under scrutiny. This work supports leaders who require clarity in environments where decisions carry real consequences.
How I Work With Organizations
I work in an advisory capacity with executives, boards, and public-sector organizations who require discretion, clear judgment, and a systems-level perspective. Engagements are shaped by the conditions an organization is facing and are designed to support learning, accountability, and sound decision-making under pressure.
If you’d like to understand how this work applies in practice, you can learn more on the Work With Me page.
Professional Background
My background spans business, philosophy, human resources, occupational health and safety, and psychosocial risk management. I have published peer-reviewed research and applied writing on psychosocial risk and organizational systems, and I continue to contribute to conversations on leadership, risk, and institutional resilience.
Credentials and publications inform my work, but they do not define my judgment. What matters most is how ideas hold up in practice, particularly in environments where failure carries human, operational, and reputational consequences.
Credentials & Certifications
Formal training supports this work and is applied through practice in complex, high-stakes environments, including:
Doctorate in Business Management (Ph.D.)
Master’s degree in Philosophy (M.Phil.)
Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA)
Degree in Business Management (B.Mgmt.)
Diploma in Human Resources
Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety
Certification in Psychosocial Risk Management
Quadruple Board-Certified Health & Safety Professional
(CRSP, CSP, MIIRSM, CMIOSH)
For a practical view of how this expertise is applied, visit the 'Work With Me' page.
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Strong systems rely on clarity, not heroics.