At a late-May ceremony, seven U of T alumni received all six 2026 YWCA Toronto Distinction Awards, with the Health award shared by two recipients. Basu founded Green Hope Foundation in 2012 at age 12; it has since helped more than 600,000 women and girls across 29 countries.
Janice Rubin, 35 years since her call to the bar, built Rubin & Co. LLP to fight workplace harassment (Law award); Chinyere Eni, who rose from bank teller to Head of RBC Origins and helped launch RBC's first Reconciliation Action Plan, lost her leg to cancer as a child and has volunteered with the War Amps (Corporate Leadership award).
The remaining awards went to Jenny Ahn (Labour), the youngest and first woman of colour elected to the Canadian Autoworkers Union's National Executive Board in the 1990s; Sara Asalya (Immigration), whose Newcomer Women's Services Toronto now serves more than 20,000 clients a year; and co-CEOs of the Association of Ontario Midwives Juana Berinstein and Ellen Kanika Tsi Tsa Blais (Health), who ground their work in the Two Row Wampum treaty.
Reported from U of T alumni sweep the 2026 YWCA Toronto Distinction Awards, by Coby Zucker (U of T Alumni News, July 13, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-alumni-sweep-2026-ywca-toronto-distinction-awards