"I started my career as an elementary school teacher, and they were some of the most magical years of my life. Teaching for me has become a journey of self-discovery, an encounter with the self. Education is ultimately an endeavour in being more human. It demands of us an ongoing commitment to living and working […]
"Building an inclusive community is one of my biggest agendas as a Residence Life Don." Nisadu Basnayaka Residence Don, Winters 3rd Year, Actuarial Science
"I grew up fairly poor as a young gay kid in rural Newfoundland. That experience really defined my interest in looking at access - thinking about how policy impacts the delivery of healthcare and social services to LGBBTIQQ2SA and First Nations people, to people of low socio-economic status, people of colour, and Indigenous Peoples more […]
"Like everyone else, I was following the developing COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year. Though it initially seemed so distant, the pandemic became much more real when the first cases began to appear in Canada, and even more so when my partner, who has just completed medical school, was pulled off his clinical rotations for his […]
"After I moved to Toronto in the early 2000’s, I was really missing the simplicity of life in Northwestern Ontario. When I was young, my parents used to take my brother, sister and I up to camp on remote islands on Crownland. We would portage into lakes and spend time swimming and running around, finding […]
"My big interest in astronomy came from when I was a kid. I grew up in the 80s and there was so much exciting stuff happening in space. There was the space shuttle, there were the Voyager probes, and Star Wars was the big movie. Also my father built his own telescope from scratch. And […]
"Community plays a significant role in our lives and in our educational pursuits. Hence, the questions which we pursue in our teaching, service work, and/or are informed by the community to which we belong or with which we identify. So, it is understandable that my entry into sociology, in part, would be inspired, my questions […]
"When my mom was in elementary school, her best friend went missing. About six years ago, they were reconnected and my mom began to learn her story. At the age of 14, my mom’s friend was trafficked for sex in Ontario, Canada. When I heard her story, I was shocked and heartbroken. I began asking […]
"York University played a pivotal role in helping me to achieve all of my success. I always had the support of my supervisors Dr. Isabel Killoran and Dr. Gillian Parekh and from fellow graduate students Marlena Ochnik, Ellen Brown, and Niki Belegrinis. My experiences both theoretically and practically have helped to shape me into the […]
“I never thought I would become an entrepreneur. When I was doing my MBA, I knew I wanted to change the world and make it a better place. But my vision of that was joining a big company as their Director of Sustainability. Over the course of my studies I started realizing that there were […]