Janice Smith

For more than 25 years, Janice Smith has developed her career in the hospitality industry, in the areas of food and beverage and human resources.

Currently, she is the Director of People & Organizational Performance at Delta Hotels and Resorts, Canada’s leading hotel Management Company, where she facilitates excellence, and talent development initiatives.

As a champion of the company’s Excellence initiative, Janice developed the Excellence Business Assessment (EBA), a diagnostic approach for measuring hotel performance that is based on the model of excellence advocated by Excellence Canada. By helping employees align themselves with this model, she successfully led the bid to secure three Canada Awards for Excellence, for quality (2000), a healthy workplace (2004) and the Order of Excellence Canada. She also led efforts to establish the company’s employee rewards and recognition program, CELEBRATE! recognizing individual and team achievements and championed the development of Delta’s Talent Management System, an online tool, which tracks and trends all key “touch points” in the talent lifecycle.

As mental wellbeing, diversity and inclusion are critical engagement drivers, ultimately impacting business performance, Janice is partnering with leading advocates in each arena to develop strategies to ensure that Delta is contributing to these business imperatives.

Her commitment to excellence also extends to her many volunteer roles which includes senior executive positions with the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, the Board of Directors for the Ontario Tourism Education Council (OTEC), The Human Resources Professional Association and The Mentoring Partnership. She has also served on the advisory boards of COSTI Immigrant Placement Centre, and Georgian College (Barrie), and currently serves on the Advisory board of George Brown College (Toronto) as well as Excellence Canada.

In her spare time, Janice continues to delight a small but devoted clientele with here delicious culinary treats and horticultural artistry.