Faces of WISEST: Dr. Sonia Kang

WISEST has had an enormous positive impact on my life and career. I attended the CHOICES conference as a sixth-grader and was blown away by Dr. Margaret-Ann Armour’s chemistry demonstration. A few years later, I was extremely fortunate to be chosen for the WISEST Summer Research Program after Grade 11 (1999). I collaborated on an original research project on gender discrimination in ophthalmology, and I still vividly remember my time in the SRP and how amazing it felt to present our findings at the end-of-summer poster day. The WISEST SRP was my first foray into research, and I was hooked. After high school, I completed a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Psychology at the University of Alberta and then completed masters' and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. My next position was as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, and then I landed a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of Management back at the University of Toronto, where I still am today. I earned tenure and became an Associate Professor in 2018 and I was awarded a Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion in 2019. I have also recently launched a new podcast, For the Love of Work, which explores topics critical to the modern employee experience, including resilience, diversity and inclusion, and psychological safety, and provides an exciting forum for communicating research outside of academia. My ongoing program of research employs a multi-method approach and focuses on creating diverse and inclusive workplace cultures.

The research that I am doing today is very closely connected to the mission of WISEST and the project I conducted all of those years ago as an SRP student. For example, I am involved in a major research partnership aimed at increasing girls’ and women’s inclusion and success in STEM, called the Engendering Success in STEM Research Consortium (successinstem.ca). I am so grateful for the early exposure I had to science and research through WISEST. WISEST nurtured my burgeoning interest in science and made me confident about my ability to be a leader and pursue an academic career. I look forward to seeing the WISEST community continue to grow and inspire young women for decades to come!