An education leader with a learner’s mindset

Ron Ferguson’s teenage daughters had a front-row seat to a rare sight: their dad, unable to do much else until he finished studying. CEO of the Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB), Ferguson hadn’t been a university student in 25 years. Now, as he worked through The Directors College’s Chartered Director program, he felt a healthy fear of failing.

“That fear motivated me not to slack off,” he says. “As I was going through the program, the biggest change to the governance structure of public education in Ontario since its founding — the passing of Bill 101 — was happening in the background. It was a consequential time, and getting it right was really important.”

Bill 101 clarified the roles of governance and management within Ontario’s English-language school boards. Ferguson’s education prepared him to help his board navigate those changes.

It also brought an unexpected honour. Ferguson was named the 2026 recipient of the Gil Bennett Gold Standard Award, which recognizes a Chartered Director program participant’s commitment to raising professional standards in governance.

“I am very honoured,” he says. “I went back and looked at some past winners, and I have some work to do to live up to past recipients, but it’s validation that I was gaining the knowledge and able to implement it.”

Leadership rooted in service

Long before Ferguson was leading a system of more than 4,200 staff serving over 28,000 students across 77 schools, he was a teacher.

After six years in the classroom, he became a principal and, in 2017, joined UCDSB’s senior leadership team, serving successively as superintendent of human resources, special education and school operations. In 2021, Ferguson became the director of education of UCDSB, one of the largest public-sector organizations in Eastern Ontario. Under the province’s governance changes, his role transitioned to CEO.

But the progression from award-winning educator to CEO hasn’t changed the question that grounds his work.

That perspective carries over into his governance work. Following the changes introduced by Bill 101, Ferguson also transitioned from serving as UCDSB’s board secretary to sitting as a non-voting board member. He is also the chair of the board of directors of Student Support Ontario, which administers student nutrition programs across eight school districts.

Turning knowledge into change

Ferguson’s commitment to service is equally reflected in how he approaches his own growth. After taking a governance course, Ferguson realized that, despite years of board service, he still had more to learn.

As the UCDSB worked to strengthen its governance practices, he turned to The Directors College to deepen his understanding. The timing was opportune. Soon, Ontario’s education sector began adapting to the province’s governance changes.

“I found that some of my intuition about how boards should run was correct, which was reassuring,” he says. “But there were other areas where I wasn’t aware of what I didn’t know. The program was so real and so relevant that I sometimes stopped paying attention in class because I was already thinking about how I could apply what I was learning to make changes in my organization.”

Having completed the program in May 2026, Ferguson still keeps his C.Dir. course materials beside his desk and refers to them regularly. He has also continued his education by pursuing DeGroote’s EMBA in Digital Transformation.