Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Dr Assanand and Passions

Dr Sunaina Assanand is a faculty member with the Department of Psychology at UBC. She is interested in a wide array of disciplines, including gender, cultural, and personality psychology. She is particularly passionate about issues surrounding gender and the application of psychology to international development. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, most of who live in Vancouver after migrating from Uganda.

Dr Assanand and International Women’s Day

Dr Assanand is inspired by her mother, who worked for thirty years with battered women from immigrant and visible minority backgrounds. She worked around anti-violence and is a role model for pursuing equality and safety for women in Canada.

Dr Assanand is also celebrating her twelve year old daughter this International Women’s Day. She believes that having a young daughter has made her more aware of gender issues and has shown her what immense potential young girls have. “Every girl should have the opportunity to fulfil her potential,” she says.

Dr Assanand and Women’s Issues

She is very passionate about the rights of the girl child, particularly in an international context. She believes that every child should have the right to education, freedom from physical and sexual violence, and the ability to contribute to her community. She would like to see continued progress toward gender equality. Dr Assanand believes that the increased opportunities for women over the last fifty years have been very positive; however, there is still room for growth when it comes to equality between the sexes.

As an instructor, Dr Assanand would like to see more opportunities for students to commit to social change both locally and internationally. She believes that students should be able to recognise their own voice in contributing to social change. She hopes for an educational community in which individuals are not limited by sex, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other factor.

Professor Scott and Interests

Anne Scott loves to communicate, to learn, and she loves people. She wants to be a lifelong learner and feels that she can do this through being a teacher. Currently, she works as a translator and as a 12-month lecturer in the French section of the department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies. She teaches women’s writing in French literature and shares the efforts of women trying to express themselves from within the box in which they were imprisoned in due to the societal circumstances of their times. She teaches students to question everything, especially what we think is normal or natural and tries to stop them from thinking that they have a specific role because they are women or men.

Professor Scott and Inspirations

Professor Scott’s great-great-grandmother and her great-grandmother had degrees in agriculture, obtained government awards in the field, and ran their own businesses. They were persistent and headstrong. She has always admired women in her family who thought for themselves and did not wait for the environment to form their opinions for them.

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Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Woo and Interests

Woo Kim is a Student Development Officer at UBC. Woo is really passionate about people; they are the core of everything she does. She really enjoys the idea of ‘people development’. That is, helping people get better at what they love and creating a sense of self-awareness. “I hate people being mean and I love encouraging people to be great to one another,” she says. In her spare time, Woo loves hanging out with friends, cooking, finding awesome coffee shops, and reading great books. She is huge fan of fiction; she loves the worlds that authors create.

Woo and International Women’s Day

As a people-lover, Woo is celebrating many women this International Women’s Day. She lists her colleagues, her mum, and her friends as people who inspire her on a daily basis. Woo is a big part of UBC’s Student Leadership Conference and this year she was very inspired by Waneek Horn Miller who came across as a genuine, authentic and caring person. In Waneek, Woo sees some of herself; the kind of person always striving for more.

Woo and Passions

Woo is passionate about education and she believes that the more access to education you have, the more empowered you are; it helps you make good decisions and understand your rights. Woo also believes in, and strives for, equality in the work place, especially for women of colour and minorities, both visible and invisible. She would like to see increased female representation in leadership so that young women can have more great role models to look up to.

Woo and Changes

Woo believes that there are positive changes happening for women at the moment. “Social expectations for women are changing and both men and women are responsible for this,” she says. However, she recognizes that there is still some way to go. Globally, Woo would like to have more people in power making decisions that better represent everyone and take the whole population into consideration.

Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Tamara and Passions

Tamara Baldwin is the Associate Director for International Service Learning at the Centre for Community Engaged Learning. She earned her Master’s in Poverty Reduction Development Management at the University of Birmingham and received her Bachelors in Sociology at the University of Windsor. In her spare time, Tamara is at the playground with her children, at the library, or imagining herself in far off lands where grandiose adventures take place. She also loves learning and consuming world news via podcasts, and on-line courses. Tamara is passionate about breaking the “comfortable space where our thoughts and actions are on autopilot.” She loves engaging with group of individuals who are inspired and prepared to take action!

Tamara and Inspirations

Tamara’s 98 year old grandmother inspired her with her fiercely intelligent, quick to take action, and ready-to-laugh qualities. Tamara strives to follow her example on a daily basis. Ms. Miller, her supervisor during her time at McMaster University taught Tamara about the power of holding high expectations, communicating clearly, being principled, and never forgetting about the human inside the process. From her Tamara also learned about the critical balance of leading and managing. Lastly, Leah Asego, Tamara’s friend and colleague from Nairobi, who taught her entire career in government schools in an informal settlement. Leah demonstrated how staying true to values and beliefs that conflict with current systems and dominant schools of thought will not be the easiest path to take, but are some of the most important paths to follow.

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