Isabel Deslauriers (she/her)
Isabel Deslauriers is the Director, Youth and Volunteer Experience at Let’s Talk Science, a charitable organization dedicated to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education outreach. She leads programs, in both English and French, aimed at engaging volunteers at over 50 university and college partners, and in collaboration with Indigenous communities, to provide unique volunteer and professional development opportunities and deliver hands-on STEM experiences to children and youth across Canada. Isabel was first introduced to Let’s Talk Science through the partnership program at McGill where she completed her undergrad in electrical engineering. She remained involved as a site coordinator during her time as a research and teaching assistant at the university and joined the organization full-time in 2008. Isabel also serves as vice-president of the Science Technology Awareness Network and volunteers with Litter Inventors.
As a child, Isabel benefited from high science capital. With a mother who was a teacher and a father who was a physicist, she and her siblings enjoyed science toys, visits to science museums and were well supported in their school projects. But even then, during her high school years she didn’t see herself in a STEM-related career.
The reality is most students disengage in STEM courses before the end of high school. In fact, more than half graduate without the senior level math and/or science credits needed for entry into university STEM programs.
The turning point for Isabel came when she attended a summer camp organized and hosted by engineering students at a nearby university.
“That experience is what made me decide to go into engineering,” she recalls. “I saw people that weren’t that much older than me, who looked like me and liked the same things I did: solving puzzles, reading books about how things work, doing experiments.”
Today, Isabel helps facilitate similar experiences for children and youth in communities across the country. She’s taking that work to the next level in the Advanced Leadership for Social Impact (ALSI) Fellowship program.
“My 20 years of involvement at Let’s Talk Science as a volunteer and later on as staff, have also given me a broader understanding of the inequities in science capital among different social groups across Canada, and of how other youth’s experiences and opportunities to amass science capital were vastly different than mine,” she explains.
While many factors contribute to the underrepresentation in STEM, including systemic barriers, Isabel is hoping to help plug one element of the leaky pipeline: lack of effective STEM role models affects youth from underrepresented populations.
Through her ALSI project she hopes to address barriers that may be preventing underrepresented groups from participating as role models with Let’s Talk Science and improve training to ensure volunteers and staff are able to be effective role models for a diverse youth audience.
“I believe that this dual approach will succeed in improving how we help the full range of youth in Canada see themselves as belonging in STEM.”
Mariam Masha (she/her)
Mariam Masha works for the Federal Government of Nigeria as the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Humanitarian Interventions. She plays a strategic role in planning for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the north east zone affected by the Boko Haram insurgency. She is also the CEO and Executive Secretary of the North East Children’s Trust (NECT), an NGO that provides accommodation, education, nutrition, and health and psychological supports to orphaned and vulnerable children who have been displaced by insurgency. Mariam earned her undergrad in dentistry before completing her master’s degree in public and international health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has a post graduate diploma in organizational leadership and an executive master’s in development policy and practice.
Back in 2015 in her role as Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria, Mariam was tasked with leading the Federal Government of Nigeria’s Recovery and Peace Building Assessment together with the World Bank, European Union and United Nations. The experience gave her direct insight into the damage and urgent needs within the local communities of the north east region, and inspired her to establish the North East Children’s Trust (NECT), the first private sector led, government enabled and community supported initiative to create innovative, transformative and sustainable learning ecosystems for the areas children, who have been disproportionately impacted by the Boko Haram insurgency. The conflict has left an estimated 2.8 million children in need of emergency education support in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, where 802 schools remain closed, and 497 classrooms have been destroyed.
Through the Advanced Leadership for Social Impact Fellowship program, Mariam aims to develop a documentary film to share the learnings of the NECT and advance an emerging area of study for tackling complex, multi-dimensional challenges: systems leadership.
“I believe I have a responsibility to contribute to the body of knowledge on systems leadership by sharing my experiences [delivering] education in conflict, [and to] leverage the impact as a proof of concept of what is possible,” Mariam says.
She notes it is estimated that more than half of the world’s poor will live in countries characterized by fragility, conflict, or some form of violence by the end of this decade and that the film is also intended to serve as an advocacy tool for unlocking change in approaches to delivery of education in general and influence the right actors and decision makers.
“[Our intervention] is an example of high-impact and evidence-based interventions [that] we believe can be scaled and mainstreamed into policy and programming efforts.”
Ellen Watkins (she/her)
Ellen Watkins is the Director of Corporate Services for the Haliburton, Kawartha and Pine Ridge branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). After completing her honours Bachelor of Science degree in nutrition and food science at the University of Guelph, Ellen spent the first 16 years of her career working in research and development, production supervision, delivery, sales, sales operations, process improvement, and business development in the food industry before transitioning to a regional hospital then the non-profit space in health care. She joined the CMHA Haliburton, Kawartha and Pine Ridge after five years in quality and process improvement with Peterborough Regional Health Centre and completed her Executive MBA at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, in 2021.
Ellen describes her diverse career path as one driven by curiosity, passion, and opportunities for challenge.
After honing her corporate business acumen and people centered approach working for brands such as Cadbury, PepsiCo and Kraft, she was inspired to transfer her skillset to healthcare.
During her tenure at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre, Ellen became a living organ donor to support a colleague. Later she experienced two strokes and a corrective heart procedure. During her recovery, she completed her Executive MBA at Smith while also leading the public facing operational COVID response.
She has been the director of corporate services at the CMHA Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge Branch since 2021 and entered the Advance Leadership for Social Impact (ALSI) program to explore how the power of cross-sector partnership can accelerate innovation in community healthcare. Redefining and exploring frameworks to build or rebuild partnerships aligns with the organization’s strategic direction to adapt and respond to growing demand and shifting community needs.
“A focus on partnership is required to support future growth and innovation in a complex healthcare system. Work on understanding our internal strengths and opportunities will provide the required scaffolding to recommit to community partners,” Ellen explains.
Her ALSI project leverages art and storytelling as a tool for internal stakeholders to better understand the organization’s history, current state and define a collective vision for the future.
“The intention is to generate aspirational and goal oriented focal points for our teams and to share these with the community,” Ellen says. In total, the project has co-produced 14 pieces with local artist Jason Wilkins that serve as focal points for teams, to reintroduce the organization to the community and for digital engagement on its website and through social media.
Over the next four months, using the structure and learnings from the ASLI fellowship, CMHA HKPR is also redesigning the Four Counties Crisis and Safe Beds programs and is partnering to explore a youth mental health hub pilot in Kawartha Lakes.
Katlyn Olo (she/her)
Katlyn is the Manager, Marketing at the Royal Ontario Museum, the most visited museum in Cananda and a mainstay of art, culture and nature in Toronto. In her current role she collaborates with a diverse set of artists, curators, and cultural leaders to help visitors in understanding the past, making sense of the present, and most importantly in coming together towards an accountable and shared future where everyone can flourish. She is a strong advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is working to help the community, addressing cultural sensitivity through public engagement, and partnering with equally passionate individuals striving for new and inspiring ways to solve complex social challenges. Katlyn completed her undergraduate degree in Commerce with a minor in Cultural Anthropology at McMaster University followed by her Accelerated MBA at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University.
Katlyn is an innate problem-solver, and her career in the arts and cultural sector is driven by a passion to make an impact on the world and create change for the better. While studying for her Accelerated MBA at Smith she took the opportunity to obtain a Certificate in Social Impact through the Centre for Social Impact. Partnering with a grass-roots collective of diverse artists and creators she helped to implement an inclusive and community-oriented strategic plan, creating a path for organizational success. At the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Katlyn chairs and leads an employee resource committee – ROM Pride – advocating for 2SLGBTQ+ initiatives within the museum. This desire to progress 2SLGBTQ+ diversity, equity, and inclusion is the focus of her work within the Advanced Leadership for Social Impact Fellowship.
Katlyn believes institutions can play a greater role in 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion, providing venues for meaningful change, and she is exploring how we might create better representation in our museums. While corporations and institutions signal their support during Pride Month in the form of flags, activities, and colourful calls for inclusion, she explains there “is a distinct lack of authenticity and actual work” addressing root causes that keep the 2SLGBTQ+ community at a distance.
“How can we expect space and understanding when so much of queer history has been collapsed, condensed, or erased from view? How can we expect buy-in from people who have never been faced with the struggles so many queer people have been through? Inclusion can begin with a more fulsome representation of 2SLGBTQ+ history and stories in our museums,” she says. “From learning and understanding comes empathy and empathy creates the ability to have better structures and support for any person or group of people… I’m hopeful that this will continue the process of expanding minds and growing hearts, leading to a real difference for a whole community.”