[Guelph Chapter] Women in STEM Career Panel: Empowering Women Leaders

Description: 

To celebrate International Day of Women and Girls in Science, the Guelph S2BN is hosting our 3rd annual all-women career panel. Join us for an interactive panel discussion, followed by a Q&A session to learn strategies for women to thrive as leaders in the sciences and discover career opportunities for graduate students in industry.

Objectives: 

• Discuss strategies and tools to help women thrive and forge ahead in STEM sectors
• Discuss successes, obstacles, and barriers in science- and business-related careers
• Discover career opportunities for graduate students in industry

Panelists:

Asha Parekh, PhD; Co-founder & CEO, Front Line Medical Technologies Inc.

Asha is co-founder and CEO for Front Line Medical Technologies Inc. She has a PhD in biomedical engineering from Western University with a specialty in biomaterials and medical devices. She is passionate about medical device innovation and is excited to help make a global impact with Front Line. She is active in Women in Engineering and Entrepreneurial communities and engages with various groups to discuss her views and experiences in these spaces to keep the conversations open and hopes to help inspire the next generation of women in STEM and leadership roles.

Nirali Rathwa, PhD; VC Consultant for Early Stage Ventures

Nirali currently wears several hats including early-stage venture capital (VC) consultant, ex Venture Manager (Creative Destruction Lab – Toronto), Partner Coordinator for Global  Immunization Action Network Team and Social, California, USA (GIANT) and Impact Manager for Scientudio, Canada. Before joining VC, she managed and executed pre-clinical projects in type 2 diabetes funded by Govt. of India as part of her doctoral research. She strongly advocates for female founders, women in STEM and PhDs making the transition into alternative careers.

Noha Rayad, PhD; Director of Clinical Pharmacology, Parexel

Noha holds a BPharm, MPharm, and PhD, which she received from Uppsala University in Sweden. She went on to complete her Postdoctoral Fellowship in Nanotechnology for Gene Therapy at Manchester University. She has over 20 years of professional experience in academia and the pharmaceutical industry, specializing in scientific consulting and regulatory practices within Pharma and Biotech companies. With over 70 scientific publications, she is also a Professor at the University of Toronto where she teaches and provides mentorship to students.

Monica Granados, PhD; Senior Policy Advisor, Communication and Open Science Section, Environment and Climate Change Canada

During her PhD, Monica discovered that incentives in academia promote practices that make knowledge less accessible. Since then, Monica has devoted her career to working in the open science space in pursuit of making knowledge more equitable and accessible. As a Senior Policy Advisor at Environment and Climate Change Canada Monica provides subject matter expertise and support to open science initiatives. As a member of the Leadership Team at PREreview Monica works to make peer review more open and diverse. Monica is also on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Open Data Society and an alumna of the Frictionless Fellowship Programme.