Building the Next Chapter of Wayfound in Ontario

From public safety to mental health, Wayfound welcomes Dillon Brock to help lead the continued growth of its Toronto presence.

Wayfound Mental Health Group has always been an organization built through growth, relationships, and a willingness to find new ways to meet the mental health needs of the communities it serves.

The story began in 1999, when clinical psychologist Dr. William McElheran founded WGM Psychology after a career working in community mental health. In 2007, his daughter, Dr. Megan McElheran, joined the practice as a clinical psychologist, bringing with her a particular interest in the intersection of mental health and social justice, including the experiences of first responders and others whose work routinely exposes them to trauma.

Over the years, a small psychology practice grew into something much larger.

Today, WGM is Wayfound Mental Health Group, a national mental health organization serving across North America.Wayfound has developed recognized expertise in trauma and operational stress, built partnerships with public safety organizations and researchers, and developed innovative mental health programming, including the Before Operational Stress (BOS) program.

Throughout that evolution, one idea has remained remarkably consistent: improving mental health requires more than waiting for someone to reach a point of crisis. It requires building relationships, increasing access, challenging stigma, and meeting people where they are.

Now, as Wayfound looks toward the next chapter of its work in Ontario, another path is joining that story.

Coming From the Other Side of the Work

For much of his career, Dillon Brock has worked on the other side of the mental health and public safety intersection.

A paramedic since 2009, Brock has spent his career in emergency medical services, public safety education, healthcare operations, and organizational leadership. His work has taken him from the back of an ambulance to the classroom and into senior leadership roles responsible for building and managing the systems in which first responders work.

Most recently, Brock served as Division Chief of EMS for the Dickinson Fire Department in North Dakota, where he helped build and lead a municipal advanced life support EMS system. Before that, his career included leadership in large EMS organizations, higher education, paramedic program development, and public safety operations.

Across those roles, one theme became increasingly difficult to ignore.

The people responsible for caring for communities often carry an extraordinary burden themselves.

First responders routinely work in environments shaped by uncertainty, responsibility, trauma, interrupted sleep, organizational pressures, and repeated exposure to people experiencing some of the worst moments of their lives. Brock has spent much of his career thinking about how public safety organizations can better prepare, support, and lead the people who do that work.

That shared interest created a natural intersection.

“I’ve spent most of my professional life in public safety. I’ve seen extraordinary resilience, but I’ve also seen what happens when people spend careers taking care of everyone else without always having the right support available for themselves,” Brock said. “What drew me to Wayfound is that this organization doesn’t simply understand that problem, and bring awareness. It has spent decades doing something about it. ”

Wayfound’s work with public safety personnel has grown substantially over the years. Its clinical teams have developed expertise in trauma and operational stress, while programs such as BOS have extended that work upstream, helping public safety personnel develop knowledge and skills for managing occupational and traumatic stress before significant psychological injury occurs.

For Brock, that proactive approach felt familiar.

In EMS and public safety, the best systems are not simply designed to respond when something goes wrong. They are built to anticipate risk, prepare people before difficult moments occur, learn from experience, and continuously improve.

Mental health deserves the same intentionality.

Why Toronto, and Why Now?

Wayfound’s presence in Ontario is already established.

Its Toronto clinic provides psychological services to individuals and organizations, including members of public safety and other trauma-exposed professions. Wayfound’s broader work has also created relationships across Ontario through clinical care, training, research, and partnerships.

But Toronto and the surrounding region represent an opportunity to do more.

As one of Canada’s largest and most diverse metropolitan regions, the Greater Toronto Area is home to millions of people, hundreds of public and private organizations, major healthcare systems, and some of the country’s largest public safety agencies. The need for timely, high-quality mental health care continues to grow.

For Wayfound, growing in Ontario is not simply about making the organization larger.

It is about increasing access.

Brock joins Wayfound with a mandate to help deepen the organization’s roots in Ontario by strengthening relationships with communities and organizations, increasing awareness of Wayfound’s clinical services and mental health programming, supporting the continued development of the Toronto clinical team, and identifying opportunities for Wayfound to respond to needs across the region.

That distinction matters.

Growth is valuable when it creates the capacity to serve.

More organizational relationships can mean more people learning about mental health resources before they need them. A larger clinical team can mean greater access to timely care. Stronger connections with public safety agencies can create opportunities for proactive education and support. Greater awareness can help someone who needs care find the right clinician sooner.

And sometimes, growth begins much more simply: by listening.

“I don’t want to arrive in Toronto assuming we already know what Toronto needs,” Brock said. “The first step is building relationships and listening to our clinicians, community partners, public safety organizations, healthcare leaders, and the people who live and work here. If we understand where the gaps are, we can be thoughtful about how Wayfound can help fill them.”

That approach reflects something embedded in Wayfound’s history.

The organization has grown not by abandoning its original purpose, but by expanding the ways in which that purpose can be fulfilled.

Two Perspectives, One Mission

There is another reason Brock’s arrival represents an interesting moment for Wayfound.

Mental health and organizational health are deeply connected.

A clinician may see the consequences of operational stress in an individual. An operational leader may see the systems, cultures, schedules, leadership practices, and working conditions surrounding that individual.

Neither perspective tells the entire story on its own.

Brock’s background brings the operational perspective into an organization with deep clinical expertise.

“There is tremendous value in bringing different disciplines to the same table,” Brock said. “I am not a psychologist, and I don’t pretend to be one. I come from operations, leadership, education, and public safety. I think the opportunity is in bringing those perspectives together. What can clinicians teach leaders about the environments they’re creating? What can operational leaders teach clinicians about the realities their clients return to every day? Somewhere in that intersection, we can build healthier organizations and better systems of support.”

It is an intersection Wayfound has increasingly explored through its work.

Dr. Megan McElheran, CEO of Wayfound, reflected on Dillon’s addition to the leadership team, “We’re incredibly excited to welcome Dillon to Wayfound’s leadership team. We’ve had the opportunity to get to know and work with Dillon in other capacities over the years, and through those experiences, we came to appreciate not only the depth of his experience and expertise, but also who he is as a person. Dillon leads with integrity and humility, genuinely cares about people, and is simply the kind of person you want on your team. He cares deeply about the people and communities he serves so when the opportunity arose to bring him to Wayfound, we knew he would be an exceptional fit for both our organization and our culture.  Dillon’s extensive experience in healthcare and emergency services, combined with his ability to build strong teams, meaningful partnerships, and sustainable systems, is exactly what we need for this next stage. His initial focus on growing our presence in the GTA will be an important part of Wayfound’s next chapter, and we couldn’t be happier to have him helping us shape what comes next.”

The BOS program, developed by Dr. Megan McElheran, was created to provide public safety personnel with practical, evidence-informed tools to better understand and manage operational stress. More recently, Wayfound has expanded its organizational programming through initiatives such as Trauma Informed Leadership, designed to help leaders better understand the relationship between leadership, workplace culture, trauma, and psychological health.

The common thread is proactivity.

Treatment remains essential. But there is also enormous potential in asking what can happen before someone reaches the point where treatment is necessary.

Finding a Way Forward in Ontario

More than 25 years after Wayfound’s story began, the organization looks very different from the psychology practice Dr. William McElheran founded in Calgary.

The scale has changed.

The geography has changed.

The team has changed.

The ways Wayfound delivers mental health care, education, research, and training have changed.

The underlying purpose has not.

Wayfound’s mission is to be a national centre of excellence for timely, client-focused, innovative mental health care. Fulfilling that mission requires clinical excellence, but it also requires organizations to continue asking where people are being missed, where barriers to care remain, and where new relationships could make access easier.

Toronto represents one of those opportunities.

For Brock, it also represents the beginning of a new chapter after a career spent primarily inside public safety.

“There is something meaningful to me about making this transition,” Brock said. “For years, my job has been helping build systems that take care of communities. At Wayfound, I have an opportunity to help build something that takes care of many of the people doing that work, while also expanding access to mental health care for the broader community.”

The goal is ambitious: to establish a stronger, more connected, and increasingly accessible Wayfound presence in Ontario.

But the approach is intentionally simple.

Meet people.

Listen.

Build relationships.

Understand what the community needs.

And then find a way to help.

More than 25 years after Wayfound’s story began with a psychologist committed to serving his community, its next chapter in Ontario begins with much the same idea.