People, ideas and life after U of T

Kimia Karachi was an experienced dancer but a nervous newcomer to acting when she approached Hart House Theatre in her first year. She joined the Festival of Dance executive team and helped with a panel on colourism in ballet. Soon she was taking on larger responsibilities behind the scenes.

By her final year, Karachi was coordinating events and the dance festival, chairing the theatre committee and working front of house. She graduated in 2022 and later earned a teaching degree. Now an acting coach at The Actors Room in Vaughan, she credits Hart House with teaching her how to welcome and mentor other performers.

Bavan Pushpalingam learned to grow vegetables beside his father, first on a Scarborough apartment balcony and later in the family backyard. They still grow okra, bitter gourd and other culturally important crops that can be hard to find in shops. Food bank volunteering helped turn that experience into research questions.

At U of T Scarborough, Pushpalingam studied public policy, food studies and urban governance. He worked with community organizations on food insecurity among racialized youth during the pandemic, then conducted fieldwork abroad with farmers and organizers. His aim was practical: research that organizations could use in their own programs. He is considering graduate study.

Joel Tan wanted to study biology after watching his father battle cancer. School placements in Singapore steered him away from the subject, and local universities later rejected his applications. With money for application fees limited, he tried one overseas institution: the University of Toronto. It accepted him.

At U of T, Tan took his first biology class and joined research labs. He earned undergraduate and master's degrees before completing a Harvard doctorate, where he discovered bacterial defence systems he named Hailong. As a 2026 Schmidt Science Fellow, he plans to use machine learning to study neurodegeneration, a subject made personal by his father's Alzheimer's disease.

A first-year email about the Budding Scholars Program led Kaynaat Abrar to psychologist Konstantine Zakzanis and her first research opportunities. He later supervised her honours thesis on interpreting symptoms that resemble concussion but may have other causes. She graduated with majors in population health and psychology.

Abrar worked across several labs, including a study of how young children match their walking pace to a metronome. Paid research roles and awards helped her fit that work around her studies. She also founded a student initiative focused on child and youth mental health. This fall, she returns to UTSC as her family's first PhD student.

Rose Esplen is heading to medical school at Queen's after studying neuroscience and physiology at U of T. A Fireweed Gitxsan graduate, she wants to bring her community into her medical career. Fellow graduate Tristan Gosselin, a Manitoba Métis Federation citizen, plans to pursue Indigenous justice and land claims through law.

Adrianna Lewis is focused on libraries. During her master of information degree, she helped replace colonial or racist cataloguing terms with community-preferred names. She also identified a book containing sacred ceremonial knowledge that is being returned to its community. All three found support at First Nations House during their studies.

Lellow Sedio's first attempt at university in Canada ended after a mental health crisis. Later, a Facebook advertisement brought her to U of T's Transitional Year Programme. Its small classes and support gave her time to understand what she wanted from studying and how to approach it.

Sedio graduated in book and media studies and gained admission to the Faculty of Information. Her research examined educational barriers in Botswana, including how available learning materials and language can affect students' results. She also founded Epic Minds, a nonprofit providing free educational resources, and mentored prospective students. Graduate work in critical information policy comes next.

Each morning of her placement in Nosy Be, Madagascar, Kristen Tsai took a tuk-tuk to the Sunrise Centre, a school for children with physical and intellectual disabilities. She worked with teachers on ways to support learning, including helping children develop handwriting skills through smaller, manageable steps.

Back home, Tsai stayed in touch and wrote Let's Be Nosy in Nosy Be! The children's book follows a young lemur visiting the school. All proceeds support the donation-funded centre. The placement grew from fellow alum Stephanie Ellis's work connecting the school with occupational therapists and U of T students who could help its teachers.

Seven U of T alumni received all six 2026 YWCA Toronto Distinction Awards. Juana Berinstein and Ellen Blais shared the health award for their work at the Association of Ontario Midwives, including support for Indigenous birth practices. Kehkashan Basu received the young leader award for the Green Hope Foundation, which she founded at 12.

The other recipients work in very different settings. Jenny Ahn was honoured for labour advocacy; Sara Asalya for advancing immigrant women's inclusion. Lawyer Janice Rubin was recognized for addressing workplace harassment. Chinyere Eni received the corporate leadership award for helping women from underrepresented communities advance in their careers.

U of T celebrated 36 graduating Lester B. Pearson International Scholars at a June reception. The scholarship, established in 2017, pays tuition, books, incidental fees and residence costs for four years. Speakers acknowledged the work of adapting to a new country as well as the graduates' academic achievements.

Rotman Commerce graduate Sarah Oberto Monasterios spoke about the people who made her experience meaningful. She is joining Boston Consulting Group in Chicago for work focused on the public sector, climate and social impact. Paramvir Singh will work in asset management tax at KPMG Canada, while Maansi Suri is joining infrastructure firm Jacobs Canada.

Justine Coroza performs at Toronto Tempo home games as a member of the Rhythm Section. The Trinity College graduate traces part of that professional start to a creative writing assignment: asked to describe an event, she found Hart House's Lyricists' Lounge and its Hip-Hop Education program.

She applied for a work-study position and learned to organize events with support from the program's staff. Over the next three years, she was invited to perform and lead workshops at the annual Hip-Hop Block Party. Those experiences helped her see dance as a possible career and gave her the confidence to pursue it professionally.

Emilda Thavaratnam arrived in Canada from Sri Lanka with her mother in 1990, aged five. Both parents had taught in Sri Lanka and struggled to rebuild their careers. Watching them tutor and support Toronto's Tamil community helped shape her own understanding of teaching as service.

After years teaching in Ontario colleges, Thavaratnam began a doctorate at OISE while working full time and raising a family. Her research used interviews with international students and college staff to examine financial pressures, housing and education policy. She received her PhD in June and hopes to continue that research. She is also writing short stories about Tamil migration experiences.

A rack of donated clothes can make a teaching practicum feel more manageable. OISE staff members Alex Merrick and Mairi McKenna Edwards developed the Career Closet after discussing students' needs, including the cost of suitable clothing. Its first session, held during the spring 2024 career fair, drew more than 100 students.

The initiative now has a permanent space on OISE's 12th floor, with sessions scheduled around practicums, conferences and career fairs. Students from all three U of T campuses can visit, subject to an item limit. Volunteers sort donations and help visitors find clothes that fit; guidance has also covered alterations and dressing nonbinary bodies.

A master's paper at U of T grew into a decade of research for Juan Carlos Mezo González. His first book, Gay Print Culture: A Transnational History of North America, examines magazines published from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s and the connections their editors built across borders.

Those connections travelled through letters, visits and exchanged publications. Readers encountered news of protests and repression alongside visual art that presented gay desire positively. Mezo González consulted archives in Toronto, Mexico City and elsewhere, including The ArQuives. Now teaching at Mount Royal University, he brings archival materials into his courses so students can work directly with the documents.

More than 15,000 students were expected to graduate from U of T in spring 2026. Among them, conservation and biodiversity graduate Felipe Sarmiento Gómez took his research to Colombia and worked with a sustainable cacao startup in Costa Rica. Catherine Wang found her direction in nutrition and planned further study at Columbia University.

Sprinter Isaiah Gardner's experience of injury drew him toward athletes' physical and mental rehabilitation. At Mississauga, commerce graduate Ruqaiya Rahman mentored incoming students and hoped to earn her CPA designation. Diego Arreola Fernández combined economics and international relations with environmental advocacy, co-founding Green Speaking and working with the university's Trash Team.

Hannah Chown scored the only goal in the Varsity Blues women's soccer team's first championship victory in 2025. A corner from Emilija Lucic set up the captain's finish against Guelph. With a teaching degree from OISE completed, Chown is now pursuing the possibility of a professional playing career.

She plays for Simcoe County Rovers FC and coaches girls whose support has followed her to university matches. Teaching runs in her family: both her mother and grandmother entered the profession. Her undergraduate years also included English and theatre studies, with performances on stage between commitments on the pitch. For now, she wants to give soccer her full effort.

John and Elizabeth Warrener knew each other in high school, but neither initially planned a library career. John entered U of T's Master of Library Science program in 1971; Elizabeth followed a year later. Summer work in Etobicoke's library system led both toward careers serving its readers.

The couple could work for the same system, though not in the same branch. Over the next 25 years, they worked mainly in reference, with Elizabeth also handling children's services and John taking on branch leadership. Retirement brought volunteer work with Ex Libris. Both remain donors to the Faculty of Information, alongside other educational and community causes.

A short note can matter to a student struggling through nursing school. Carla Coverdale contributes to Bloomberg Nursing's Words of Wisdom campaign and has helped students find mental-health support as a clinical instructor. Fellow alum Alex Harris mentors graduate students, a commitment she says has renewed her own energy for nursing.

Other volunteers bring students into clinical practice. Emergency nurse practitioner Carrie Kan works as a preceptor and instructor, learning alongside the people she teaches. Brock Cooper has mentored undergraduate and nurse practitioner students, supported admissions and helped develop an online module about adult depression. Their accounts describe teaching as an exchange between generations of nurses.

In 2009, Sheena Josselyn and collaborators reported that they had located and erased a specific fear memory by destroying the cells that stored it. The work helped establish how clusters of neurons, called engrams, carry memories. At SickKids and U of T, Josselyn has continued investigating how those clusters form and function.

Her lab's later work examined why traumatic memories can spread beyond their original setting. A 2025 paper linked stress to unusually large engrams and traced a mechanism involving cortisol. Josselyn hopes this research can inform future treatment, while recognizing the distance to clinical use and the ethical questions raised by altering painful memories.

As a residence peer academic leader at U of T Mississauga, Ophelia Chang helped students handle unfamiliar surroundings and academic demands. One memory is especially concrete: a shopping trip to prepare students for their first Canadian winter. She also helped develop programming on communication and workplace expectations before graduation.

After earning her commerce degree in 2009, Chang used Career Centre support to find her first accounting position. Audit and IT audit followed, then risk management. She describes building a leadership dashboard and investigating the causes of incidents in her director role. Her Women in Risk and Governance initiative extends that work through mentorship and resources for underrepresented professionals.

Rachel Pardoe began baking seriously in 2020 while working in community health, raising a young child and expecting another. Sourdough gave the Bloomberg Nursing graduate a creative outlet during an unsettled period. Decorative scoring caught her attention, and sharing her experiments eventually brought more than a million followers across social platforms.

Her debut cookbook, Sourdough Everything, includes classic loaves, more demanding recipes and ways to use leftover starter in foods such as pancakes and pasta. Pardoe encourages beginners to read visual cues rather than worry only about temperatures. She has stepped back from full-time nursing but still works casually in community health, bringing its emphasis on empathy to her online community.

Stephan Dyer's path to comedy ran through a banking career and a U of T Toastmasters class. The 2010 commerce graduate later left finance, performed with major comedy outlets and co-founded reTHINK Group to teach workplace communication. He now teaches public speaking at U of T's School of Continuing Studies.

His advice is demanding but practical. Open strongly, tailor the material to the audience and invite participation every few minutes. Rehearsal means speaking aloud, not running through words in your head. Dyer recommends at least 20 run-throughs for a 30-minute presentation; recording practice sessions helps speakers hear repetition and decide what to cut.

Caitlin Zhang started a podcast to ask alumni what they had done with their economics degrees. Those conversations helped her practise interviewing, while networking at other events led to an adviser role at Sun Life. Computer engineering graduate Leo Li built experience through student clubs and a co-op before receiving an offer from Red Hat.

Tanya Kaur Talwar took a more targeted route: she read a professor's research before writing about their shared interests. She now works in OISE's Mathematical Thinking Lab. At UTM, Valentina Bravo's work-study experience and a proposed careers newsletter preceded her role as a career readiness coordinator. Each found useful opportunities while still exploring what suited them.

Yan Wu's route to public art included a computer science degree and five years working in that field. She sees a connection between software processes and conceptual art. After earning her Master of Visual Studies in 2015, she worked in Shanghai and at U of T's Art Museum; she is now Markham's public art curator and a Daniels PhD student.

A breast cancer diagnosis in 2023 prompted her to imagine art in hospital spaces. With fellow patients Kara Hamilton and Patricia Ritacca, Wu formed the collective CMBT. They brought Scott Rogers's soundscape Between Leaf & Light to Barrie's Hudson Regional Cancer Centre, exploring how art might change patients' experience of care.

Yecid Ortega began learning English with a bilingual dictionary his mother gave him in Bogotá. He later trained as a teacher, worked in Chicago and founded iLanguage Kids in Canada. The children's Spanish program expanded into several languages, with a team of about 10 instructors.

At OISE, Ortega earned a master's degree in 2015 and a doctorate in 2021. His research connected language teaching with social justice and ethnography. His book, Pluriversal Applied Linguistics, challenges Eurocentric approaches and considers emotion, spirituality and lived experience in language learning. Launched in December 2025, it draws on years of teaching and collaboration across continents.

Four Varsity Blues alumni are among those named for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. Gabrielle De Serres joins France's women's hockey team after a U of T career that included a provincial championship. Canadian ice dancer Paul Poirier enters his fourth Olympics, having won an OUA freeskate title during his season with the Blues.

Luka Stoikos qualifies for Canada's bobsled team less than a year after the BC Lions drafted him. At U of T, he competed in football and track and field. Justine Todd returns for her third Olympics as a women's hockey official; she played for the Blues from 2002 to 2007.

Sidoné Grange stayed at UTM for a final research summer after graduating in 2025. In Steven Short's lab, she examined viruses that infect freshwater algae. Two undergraduate research awards supported work on a viral genome and, later, comparisons of how another strain infected algal cells.

Outside the lab, Grange co-led the Black Students' Association, started its mentorship program and helped establish an interim Black Student Space at the Kaneff Centre. A hospital research placement, where she spoke with patients about their treatment, strengthened her interest in medicine. She began a master's in biomedical engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University in fall 2025.

Heather Stark combined Canadian Studies and Commerce at U of T while supporting herself through work. She began at University College, later taking UTM courses after moving to Oakville. Smaller classes and flexible study helped her continue while working at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She credits her arts training with strengthening her ability to interpret financial information.

Stark later became CFO of Weight Watchers International during a restructuring, managing $1.5 billion in debt and communicating with investors and analysts. She now leads finance at The Fertility Partners. Her stated priorities include understanding people's circumstances before introducing change and making strategy clear enough to act on. She hopes eventually to become a CEO.

Hargun Rekhi struggled to find community during her first two pandemic-era years at U of T. A summer research placement at Koffler Scientific Reserve changed that. Living with eight other students, she combined an independent project with groundskeeping and says the friendships helped her feel connected to science.

She later served as University College's student sustainability commissioner and worked with the president's environmental advisory committee. Her projects included a waste audit, reusable cup sales, clothing swaps and an inter-college sustainability conference. After graduating in environmental science in June 2025, Rekhi began graduate studies at York University focused on Indigenous sovereignty and community consultation.