It has been 33 years since a gunman shot and killed 14 women at the École Polytechnique de Montréal on December 6, 1989.
Waterloo Engineering alumni Sandra Ketchen (BASc ’92, chemical engineering) and Jodi Menezes (BASc ’13, chemical engineering), and fourth-year chemical engineering student Nusayba Sultana, reflect on what the attack continues to mean for them as women in engineering.
Sandra Ketchen (BASc ’92, chemical engineering) is the President and CEO at Spectrum Health Care.
"Let the important memory of the 14 women killed 33 years ago remind us that we must never grow complacent," Ketchen says. We must pay attention to fostering diversity and inclusion and continue to strive for greater equity – for all – in our profession."
Jodi Menezes works in medical device sales at Johnson & Johnson.
"There was – and still is – a lot of righteous sadness, anger and frustration on this anniversary," Menezes says. "For me, it calls to mind all the women all over the world who have lost their lives to or experience gender-based violence."
Nusayba Sultana is a fourth-year chemical engineering student at Waterloo.
"I am grateful to all the people whose efforts and attention have given me and my generation more freedom, more choice," Nusayba says. "But we still have a lot of work to do – gender-based violence is a very real threat in many people’s lives and workplace discrimination still exists.
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