I have always been interested on how policy decisions get made and beleive that we need to use evidence in our decision making processes. That’s why I got involved with the science policy community in Canada.
In 2018, I co-founded Toronto Science Policy Network (TSPN) a student group at the University of Toronto. Our goal was to learn more about the Canadian Science Policy landscape and connect with other students and postdoctoral scholars who were also interested in this space. I helped lead the group as Vice-President from 2018-2020 and President from 2020-2021. Over the past year, I have been assisting the group in a more advisory capacity and working collaboratively with different science policy organizations in Canada.
During my time at TSPN, I co-led the #VoteScience campaign at TSPN, and co-organized the survey and report on the Impacts of COVID-19 on Graduate Students in Canada. I also co-wrote a policy memo about Improving the Accessibility of Graduate Student Awards.
The #VoteScience first launched in 2019 and is a non-partisan campaign that encourages voters to ask their candidates about scientific issues and asks candidates to commit to evidence-informed decision making. I helped organize this first campaign in 2019 and again in 2021. Some of the work I did included the development and design of the post-cards sent to MPs and the infographics (like the one below) on how to contact your elected representative.
In the past few months I have also been helping with the #SupportOurScience campaign which is seeking increased funding for graduate students and post-doctoral scholars across Canada. To do this we launched a petition to the House of Commons asking for increases to the value and number of Tri-Council awards.
