Ann-Marie Kungl
Ann-Marie Kungl (MPH'08) is a woman for all seasons.
“Gardening and food security has become something I’m spending more time on,” Ann-Marie says. She is part of Barrie Urban Gardening initiatives and recently joined the Barrie Communities in Bloom Committee. “Last year, I worked on a new 15,000-square-foot community garden that donates vegetables to local agencies in Barrie.”
Barrie city councillor Ann-Marie Kungl is a virtuoso at juggling many things – from volunteering at COVID-19 vaccine clinics to informing Barrie’s Age Friendly Community Plan to part-time beekeeping.
She also has more than 18 years of health system experience that she puts to good use as the CEO of Kungl Consulting, a company that provides health and mediation services. Having such a diversity of interests isn’t a new phenomenon for Ann-Marie. “My pathway in life hasn’t been linear in any way,” she says.
Things seemed to have started, though, with a love of athletics.
“I played every sport possible growing up,” she says, “and I studied physical education at Brock University.”
After graduation, Ann-Marie was hired as physiology lab coordinator at Queen’s University. “I was looking for opportunities to tie physical and health education to a career,” she explains.
She oversaw randomized control trials looking at the effect of physical activity on seniors’ health. The experiments demonstrated that exercise could have a major impact on well-being, inspiring Ann-Marie to make public health her lifelong calling.
“The acute health care system reacts to injury, illness, and disease,” she says. “I wanted to bring preventative public health policy into areas that I felt should be incorporated into health-care decision making.”
Ann-Marie enrolled in Lakehead University’s Master of Public Health program and, while still a student, was hired by Cancer Care Ontario’s prevention unit to work with the Ontario Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance.
This, in turn, led to a job with the Ontario Public Health Association. By 2006, Ann-Marie was one of the first staff members with the province’s newly established Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs).
These jobs were excellent training for Ann-Marie’s entry into the government-funded home care sector. In 2013, she joined the North Simcoe Muskoka Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) as the Director of Communications and Organizational Development working with patients and their caregivers to improve services and ensure that the voices of patients informed service delivery and access to care.
She also became adept at helping families navigate through difficult situations and provided community education on the importance of advanced care planning.
Dealing with complex family and health situations and resolving conflicts prompted Ann-Marie to earn health law and dispute resolution certificates from York University to enhance her communication and mediation skills.
“You can apply those skillsets around the boardroom table in conflict resolution situations,” Ann-Marie says, “and this supported the next step in my career path. I founded Kungl Consulting in 2018 to provide health strategy planning, policy writing, and dispute resolution services.”
Her shift to entrepreneurship was also motivated by the need for flexible working hours because she had her sights on a new challenge – municipal politics.
“I realized that cities had a huge influence on public health and that being a councillor would support my passion for community wellbeing,” Ann-Marie says.
She was elected to Barrie’s city council in 2020 and she’s currently part of committees addressing affordable housing, homelessness, human services, food insecurity, seniors’ wellness, and reducing barriers for women interested in political office.
“Being a city councillor is allowing me to broaden the public health conversation,” Ann-Marie says. “I want to help people live well and thrive by advocating for good public policy.”