I grew up in Ottawa and completed my BA in Psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. There I completed an Honours thesis in my final year, examining the relationship between adolescent depressive symptoms, risk-taking frequency and perception, and emotion regulation difficulties. Following this, I pursued a Master’s degree in Child Development at University College London. My dissertation examined how socioeconomic disadvantage, parenting, and household chaos contributed to the developmental trajectories of emotional and behavioural problems of children with ADHD. Together, my previous education, research, and work in schools led me to pursue the MA in School Psychology at UBC. While I was so far from home, the program’s strong sense of community made me feel very welcome. My MA thesis, titled Secondary School Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of School Mental Health Climate, involved semi-structured interviews with high school students to explore the mental health climate of secondary schools in the Lower Mainland. Students’ perceptions and experiences concerning what schools are doing well and how schools can improve the ways in which they support students provided valuable information and communicated how schools can address students’ unmet needs. I intend to continue my research in the area of school-based mental health as a continue my studies in the SACP doctoral program. My main research interests involve youth and school-based mental health, including the mental health climates of high schools.