Apar Initiative held another successful online event on December 20th, 2020 with the purpose of highlighting varying perspectives from university students and young professionals working in STEM. Panelists came from Calgary and Toronto, and each had a unique and meaningful role to play in the international STEM landscape. With a range of involved university students, to ambitious young professionals, our cohort was not short on inspiration at this event. The diverse experiences and opinions of the panel was a direct reflection of the diversity that can present itself in STEM fields which is exactly what Apar was hoping to achieve with this event.

To give readers an idea of the wide range of role models that were present at this event, they were as follows; Ester, a fourth year Civil Engineering student at U of C, who became Vice President of the Civil Engineering Undergraduate society who also completed an internship in Japan. The second panelist was Harsupreet Sindhu. She completed her bachelor of Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in biomech at the U of C. She also completed a 16 month internship at TC energy where she started her career on the gas facilities internship team. Next was Hope Roberts, a multifaceted young lady pursuing both Civil engineering and Commerce at the U of C. She also had interests in accelerating the encouragement of Women in STEM and as such decided to join the Women in Science and Engineering organization at university. Kat Heger is a Biochemistry and English Student who also had an interest in pursuing creative writing and became the Editor and Chief of NOD literary. Finally, we had Maytha Nassor is a dedicated Computer Science grad who is putting her skills to use as a Cybersecurity consultant. Graduating from Queen’s University, she pursued her passion in robotics and coding that she developed early on in her life.