What would the members of the Women’s Giving Circle (WGC) have done without Dr. Roger Deeley? “It would have made the allocation of grant money much more difficult, if not impossible, if he hadn’t helped us,” says Evelyn Maizen, University Hospitals Kingston Foundation (UHKF) Board member, and WGC founding member. “He was the link between our members and the researcher community.”

As Dr. Roger Deeley steps down from his combined roles of Vice President, Health Sciences Research, Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC), President and CEO, KGH Research Institute and Vice-Dean, Research, Faculty of Health Sciences (Queen’s), the members of the WGC are adding their voices to the chorus of tributes and messages of gratitude for career contributions that have furthered the cause of research and benefited the community in untold ways.

“The motivating force behind the Women’s Giving Circle was always research. We knew what we wanted to support but we didn’t know how we were going to donate the funds and where they would do the most good.” Evelyn says the WGC is indebted to Dr. Deeley for helping the group to make meaningful, impactful awards to ground-breaking research at KHSC and Providence Care totaling more than $250,000.

“Dr. Deeley and his team suggested areas for research and, once the WGC membership voted on the particular area to fund, he put out the requests for proposals, vetted the submissions and, ultimately, decided who was going to be granted the research money.” Through his many years of dedicated support for the philanthropic group, Dr. Deeley is described as having been “caring and mindful of the resources that we had” helping the women to direct their funding to the “best possible avenues.”

The WGC is a group of nearly 100 women who “desire to support the brilliant and creative minds working within KHSC and Providence Care.” Since its inception in 2013, WGC grants have supported research in areas such as: critical care/end of life, mental health, chronic pain, musculoskeletal disease and gastrointestinal disease. “Some of the grants Dr. Deeley helped us to award have been seed money,” says Evelyn Maizen, “which has enabled the researchers to apply for larger grants.”

Evelyn Maizen says Dr. Deeley will be difficult to replace, “Hopefully we’ll find someone as committed to research and to the WGC as Dr. Roger Deeley.”

Read more about Dr. Deeley's celebratory career here.