Heather Buerkle

Heather Buerkle has over 30 years of experience in various roles within the technology and financial services industries. Heather is currently serving as a Sr Devops Engineering Specialist Lead at Canada Life since 2023. Prior to this, Heather worked at Manulife for a significant portion of their career. At Manulife, they held positions including Lead Platform Reliability Engineer, Senior Platform Reliability Engineer, Senior Solutions Designer, Business Systems Consultant, Development Practice Manager, and Development Consultant. Throughout their tenure at Manulife, Heather demonstrated strong leadership skills, expanded teams under their leadership, and achieved high employee engagement scores. Heather also played a key role in providing end-to-end monitoring consulting and strategy, consolidating tooling to reduce operational expenses, and defining application monitoring standards and practices. Before joining Manulife, Heather gained experience as a Programmer/Analyst at Davids Ltd., a Programmer at IBM Global Services Australia, an Intermediate Systems Designer at Manulife Financial, and a Programmer Analyst at The Mutual Group. Overall, Heather Buerkle has a diverse background in working with technology and financial services companies, holding various roles focused on engineering, reliability, consulting, and leadership.

Heather Buerkle obtained their Bachelor of Mathematics (BMath) degree in Computer Science and Statistics from the University of Waterloo, where they attended from 1988 to 1993. Additionally, they have achieved several certifications throughout their career, including Professional Scrum Product Owner™ I (PSPO I) from Scrum.org in June 2023, a Leadership Certificate from the University of Waterloo in May 2021, TOGAF 9 from The Open Group in November 2011, and the Fellow, Life Management Institute certification from LOMA Canada in September 1996.