SHE/HER

I have an Honours BSc from the University of Guelph in Biomedical Sciences, an MSc from the University of Waterloo's School of Public Health & Health Systems and am presently a PhD student at the University of British Columbia at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability in the Law, Governance, Justice and Policy Stream.

My MSc thesis aimed to discern the knowledge and understanding of climate change-related health risks by public health authorities, and evaluate local mitigation, adaptation and risk communication strategies. This work was of interest to Health Canada, as well as municipal health units as it aims to address existing knowledge gaps they have previously identified. During this time, I was also lead research assistant on a CIHR-funded study looking into sociocultural and behavioural factors affecting communities' response to countermeasures for the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is of interest to the Ontario Ministry of Health, as it aims to identify interventions to build trust in public health authorities and to improve compliance to health measures.

For my doctoral research, I will be looking into how we can be more meaningfully inclusive of racially, ethnically and gender-minoritized peoples, who are most disproportionately burdened with negative health impacts as a result of exposure to environmental hazards, pollutants and toxins, within environmental health policy. This emerging work is informed by community-identified needs, and will be utilizing community-based participatory action research methods, alongside arts-based and futurities-oriented approaches to investigate what intersectionally-just futures can look like for those made more structurally vulnerable within what is currently Canada.

I have experience teaching, mentoring and designing educational curricula in academic settings. I am a frequent guest lecturer across a variety of topics, most commonly health policy, health risk communication, environmental health and justice, climate justice, community organizing, movement building and youth engagement, eco-grief/anxiety, anti-colonial and equity-centred research methods and gender-based/intersectionality oriented analyses across a variety of topics. I have also mentored fifteen undergraduate students in their thesis research as part of role at the Climate Justice Research Collaborative at UBC, and aided with the supervision of over 100 undergraduate co-op students who completed their community research placement at my non-profit, Shake Up The Establishment. 

Although I mostly use qualitative and social science focused research methods at the moment, I am highly proficient in clinical, wet lab, qualitative and quantitative research methods, having had over 4 years of experience in conducting research at institutions including the University of Guelph, the Hospital for Sick Children, and University of Waterloo.  I presented original findings as first author, during the third year of my undergraduate degree, via an oral podium presentation at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference in Florida in 2018. I am a published author in translational medicine, and I have also worked on a systematic review where I was co-lead author; our findings were presented in June 2019 at the European Pediatric Surgery Association (EUPSA).

Through my non-profit work, I've been a storyteller through a variety of mediums, including a National Geographic mini documentary, news engagements, podcasts interviews, social media campaigns, public speaking and written content. I have gained the skills to write, design, produce, edit and efficiently share/promote educational content through the medium of stories to support causes and action-oriented campaigns for social good. Recently, I acted as an executive producer. for Shake Up The Establishment (SUTE)'s Voices of the Greenbelt mini-documentary that we shot and produced to support ongoing conservation efforts for this critical region in Ontario, Canada. I also co-edited and authored the new book, Practicing Rest, Recovery, Resistance: An Interactive Dreaming Journal with the SUTE team.
 
These selection of experiences stand as a testament to my interdisciplinary knowledge, high skill set in conducting different types of research and my high level of proficiency in communicating these findings to any audience.

My main areas of interest at the moment are in the intersections of health policy, climate justice, behavioural science, risk communication and social determinants of health/equity-focused research.