Find inspiration for your future career at Career Café. Join KPE alumnae on January 27 at 7 p.m. as they share experiences and insights from their professional journeys. Interact with professionals in a variety of fields and explore your career potential!
Our panelists:
Laura McDonnell
Laura is a Leadership and Community Facilitator who invites people of all ages into an embodied awareness of collective well-being. She designs workshops and gatherings that tap into the gifts of the community for powerful co-creation. Drawing on 20 plus years of leadership and community building in corporate and non-profit settings, Laura uses nature-based principles and practices to deepen people’s experience of presence, connection, and creativity. From this embodied state of awareness, whether individual or collective, greater possibilities can’t help but emerge.
Laura’s commitment to building spaces that value the well-being of all is expressed in many forms, including: Organizational Development, Regenerative/Self-organized Leadership, Compassionate Communication, Visioning, Participatory Community Engagement, Program Design and Facilitation, and Nature-connection Mentoring.
As a BPHE graduate (precursor to KPE) and a Varsity Ice Hockey alumna, University of Toronto gave Laura an embodied understanding of the value of community, teamwork and shared leadership, and inspired a love of organizational development. Laura also completed studies in Adult and Continuing Education, and Multimedia Technology, and is a strong advocate for lived experience. She has apprenticed in a number of leadership and community-building modalities that give her a wholistic understanding of personal and collective well-being.
In her spare time, Laura volunteers at a youth camp, and with an urban wellness prototype team. She loves to cycle, snowshoe, gather in community, wander in nature, and explore mystical and wisdom teachings
Samantha Triemstra
Samantha graduated from the University of Toronto Kinesiology program in 2017. Samantha also graduated from the University of Toronto with her Master of Science in Physical Therapy program 2019.
Samantha is originally from Ottawa, where she found her love of working with children with special needs while running a lunchtime activity class for her high school's community living population. Samantha has continued to work with the paediatric population as a physiotherapist. She currently works at Erinoakkids, a children's treatment centre. She has worked in many programs there including school based rehabilitation services, early development, Botox clinic, Orthopedic clinic and range of motion clinic. She is looking forward to continuing her education and career in the field of paediatric physiotherapy.
Sarah Wellman
Sarah Wellman is a Research Coordinator with CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research at McMaster University. She is currently part of the MPOC 2.0 project, which is exploring Canadian families' experiences of family-centred service within the healthcare system. Concurrently (though on leave), Sarah is also a Research Coordinator with the Infant, Child and Youth Health lab (https://www.inchlab.ca/) at Brock University, involved mainly in a longitudinal study evaluating the effects of poor motor coordination on physical activity and fitness in young children. Clinically, she has also led an intervention study which promoted physical activity and exercise for children born with congenital heart defects at The Hospital for Sick Children. Sarah has a Master's degree in Human Kinetics from the University of Ottawa, and an undergraduate degree in Physical & Health Education from the University of Toronto. She is also a Certified Exercise Physiologist with CSEP.
The event will be held over Zoom.
How to participate
Register online for Career Café: Women in Kinesiology & Physical Education