Ron Schlegel, chair of the Homewood Research Institute Board of Directors, is also the chair and owner of four family-owned companies: Schlegel Poultry Inc., which operates more than 20 farms; Schlegel Villages, a group of 19 nursing/retirement home multi-component complexes; Schlegel Urban Developments; and Homewood Health which provides employee and family assistance services as well as outpatient mental health and addictions treatment and management programs across Canada.  Homewood Health also includes Homewood Health Centre, a residential mental health and addictions hospital in Guelph, and inpatient treatment centres in Montréal and Victoria.

As chair of Homewood Research Institute, Ron is building on an academic career devoted public health.  He earned an MSc in exercise physiology from the University of Illinois and a PhD in social psychology/preventative medicine from The Ohio State University before joining the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo where he helped establish what is now the School of Public Health & Health Systems.  He also founded the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging and is developing a Centre of Excellence for Innovation in Aging at the University of Waterloo.

An officer of the Order of Canada, Ron is a member of the Communitech Entrepreneur Hall of Fame and the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame.  He has received numerous awards for his business and community leadership including the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Ontario), International Innovator of the Year for Seniors Care, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo.