If you wish to be in contact with any of the winners please e-mail chair@soroptimistfoundation.ca.
Kimberley Allen, R.N., M.N. PhD Student
Lawrence S. Bloomberg, Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, ON
Kimberley is a Registered Nurse and a 3rd year PhD student at the Lawrence S.
Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at University of Toronto (U of T). During her Master of
Nursing studies, Kimberley focused on issues pertaining to nursing care of pregnant
and postpartum women.
Kimberley co-authored a Cochrane Systematic Review evaluating treatments for
antenatal depression. Kimberley has co-authored a Cochrane Review evaluating
treatments for nipple pain among breastfeeding women and is currently coauthoring
another review evaluating prevention strategies to decrease pain
associated with breastfeeding. For her PhD dissertation, Kimberley is proposing
to conduct a three-armed, multi-centre randomized controlled trial evaluating
common interventions to treat nipple pain for breastfeeding mothers. Her study
will fill a research gap pertaining to appropriate, evidenced-based care for new
mothers with difficulty breastfeeding, with the potential to affect post-partum
care both nationally and internationally. Through her research, Kimberley
endeavours to enhance the experience of pregnancy and childbirth for all
women.
In addition to her academic pursuits, Kimberley is an active member of the
Canadian Pain Society (CPS), an executive member of the U of T Graduate
Nursing Students’ Society, a peer reviewer for the CPS Scientific Committee, and
an active member of the Childbirth Nurses’ Interest Group for the Registered
Nurses’ Association of Ontario. Most importantly, Kimberley is a single mother of
two daughters. Kimberley hopes her success as a clinician and researcher in
women’s health will serve as a positive role model for her girls, as they have
given her inspiration to improve the experience of pregnant and post-partum
women during what should be a beautiful, and memorable time of life.
Candace Brunette BA, MA student
University of Toronto
Candace Brunette is a 30-year old Omushkego Cree
woman of both Cree and French heritage. Born and
raised in Cochrane in Northern Ontario, Candace
believes that her intimate connection to land is a
central source of inspiration in her artistic, scholarly
and community work, which primarily revolves
around working with young women and Elders.
As an Indigenous female artist (playwright, poet
and performer) Candace carries the stories of her
ancestors and a complex narrative of self. Candace is a proud graduate of the Aboriginal
Studies Program at the University of Toronto; where she is completing a Master of Arts in
Education. Her graduate research is documenting a personal and collaborative performing
art project entitled ‘Omushkego Water Stories’.
Candace is also an emerging movement educator with over 7-years of teaching
experience in wellness and theatre training contexts. Candace enjoys working with
Aboriginal woman and youth; in particular, teaching embodied forms writing, movement,
stress/energy management as well as pre/post natal classes. Candace’s lifelong passion
for understanding the subtleties of human movement began through the practices of
Yoga, Breathing, Meditation and Pilates. Her style of teaching has evolved to taking a
more somatic approach to movement. Candace’s teaching philosophy is founded on
facilitating conscious awareness of the body and breath interconnections through
movement to support Aboriginal women in experiencing the body from within. This
approach also raises consciousness of the ways that historical trauma and oppression
are encoded in the body, and can cause people to disassociate from our bodies, thus
reinforcing disembodied habitual and unconscious patterns of being and moving
through space, and in relation to each other. Candace’s approach to teaching
movement understands the body on multiple levels; wholistically, sociologically, and
psychologically/neurologically. By ensuring that Aboriginal women have a safe space to
get back into their bodies and experience, dissect and explore movement at its core
basis, Candace aims to contribute to the growing discourse in ‘decolonizing the body’
from an Aboriginal perspective. Candace is currently working toward a Certified
Movement Analyst (CMA) certification with the Laban/Bartenieff & Somatic Studies
International Program. Her vision is to complete a PhD and to document this transformative
learning approach, which strives to move Aboriginal women experientially and
holistically, individually and collectively, from colonial subjugation to embodied ‘self-inrelation’.
Michele Murphy BEd, BA, Ma Student
University of British Columbia
Michele Murphy is a Master’s student at the Centre for
Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of British
Columbia. She also holds a Bachelor of Education from
Queen’s University and a Bachelor of Arts from Trent
University. Michele has combined her experience as a
teacher, social activist, and graduate scholar into a career
path aimed at helping women actively resist violence,
recover from trauma and addiction, and live empowered lives.
While teaching at a school in Nunavut, Michele became interested in Inuit
women’s organizing and activism to resist violence. More broadly she wants to
expand feminist understandings of what constitutes resistance to violence in
different contexts. She is also interested in how interlocking forms of oppression
influence women’s diverse experiences of violence, addiction, and trauma, as
well as in feminist approaches to activism and recovery that acknowledge
difference and the realities of women’s lived experiences.
Michele has connected her graduate research to her work as a volunteer in the
Community Outreach Program at Vancouver’s Women Against Violence Against
Women Rape Crisis Centre. After completing her Master’s degree, Michele hopes
to work with women in Vancouver, advocating on behalf of survivors of violence
and trauma, helping to make their voices heard, and speaking out on the issue
of violence against women through feminist outreach and public education.
Lauren Payne, BASc, MPH student
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia
Lauren spent her youth in Hamilton, Ontario, completing her
undergraduate degree in the Arts and Science Program at
McMaster University. Her undergraduate thesis involved a
process evaluation of a Well Women clinic catering to
immigrant and refugee women’s health, identifying changes
in the clinic that could lead to improved access to
reproductive health care for the women involved. It is from
this academic environment that her interest in women’s
health arose.
Lauren’s extracurricular experiences with the McMaster Student Health Education Center,
volunteer experiences in Kenya, and involvement with the Vancouver Native Health Society in
the Downtown Eastside of the city have all helped her become a more culturally aware,
collaborative, and socially engaged researcher. She is currently a Master’s of Public Health
(MPH) student at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia where she has had the
opportunity to learn from experts in the field.
Lauren hopes to continue to conduct research involving women’s reproductive health service
provision in marginalized populations in Canada; aiming to understand the facilitators and
barriers to providing effective and efficient care to women. Specifically, she plans to
concentrate on the development, implementation, and evaluation of public health programs
and engage in participatory action research in order to improve the reproductive health of
women who face cultural barriers to care. Her research focus involves both immigrant and
refugee women in Canada, as well as aboriginal Canadian women. She strongly believes a
key component to eliminating poverty and inequity both across the globe and in Canada is to
promote the right of women to access essential and appropriate reproductive health care.
This summer she is in Northern Ontario working out of the Meno Ya Win Health Centre to
better understand and incorporate traditional First Nations birthing beliefs and practices into
the centre’s maternity care program with the ultimate goal of improving birth outcomes in the
First Nations population.
