Curious about careers in the health field? Join us for the School of Public Health and Health Systems’ (SPHHS) Virtual Career Panel!
Engage with SPHHS alumni as they discuss their pathway and experiences from university to career. Learn about panelists’ successes, challenges, and advice they have for students. Attendees will also be given the opportunity to ask panelists their questions!
Explore various careers within the health field, learn about the diversity of health-related jobs, enhance your social network, and provide a positive start to your career search at this webinar event.
Registration for this event is now closed.
This event is open to all UWaterloo students, faculty, staff and alumni.
For those attending, please review the panelists’ profiles below and prepare your questions before attending this session.
Questions about this event can be emailed to Kaitlyn Neustaedter.
Panelists
Kelly Lane
Kelly completed her undergraduate degree in the Health Studies Honours Co-op program with a Psychology minor in 2005 and is currently enrolled in the Master of Health Informatics program. Since graduating, Kelly has worked in a variety of positions within the health informatics domain at the University Health Network. Today, Kelly is a project director at TECHNA Institute. She is primarily responsible for managing projects and teams within the Informatics and Communication Technologies (ICT) Core. She focuses on utilizing digital technologies to provide health care providers and patients with systems and methods to visualize, analyze, communicate, and transfer health information. Currently, Kelly is working on projects that involve incorporating machine learning predictive algorithms at the point of care decision making, supporting virtual clinical models of care, and process redesign for streamlining and managing surgical volumes and wait times.
Palvasha Thayani
Palvasha Thayani graduated from the BSc Health Studies Honours Co-op program in 2018 and completed her Master in Health Informatics in 2019. She has worked with the Ministry of Health as a part of the Premier’s Council on ending hallway medicine and published a piece on the strained health care system. This publication was used as part of many important government decisions. This includes the allocation of funding for new primary care programs, policy development for managing healthy systems capacity issues, and development of capital towards hospital and long-term care beds. Throughout her experiences, Palvasha realized the importance of health care sector data in making meaningful change. She enjoys applying her passion for data analytics, health quality improvement, and health policy to know that she is making a difference to the health of the community. Now, as a Senior Statistics Data Analyst for York Region Public Health, Palvasha analyzes COVID-19 data and provides public policy recommendations for the region. She loves to see her work being translated into meaningful policy decisions. For example, the recent transition for York Region to safely enter the Red Zone of the provincial framework was a policy proposal her team was responsible for. They provide recommendations to the Medical Official of Health regarding how to safely re-open York Region, while keeping the health and safety of the community as their main focus.
Rachel McDonald
Rachel McDonald is a former BSc Health Studies Honours Co-op student who was accepted into medical school at the University of Toronto in 2016, after her fifth co-op work term. While in the co-op program Rachel spent all five work terms as a clinical research assistant at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Odette Cancer Centre. Rachel worked with radiation oncologists to provide patient care, developed research initiatives for palliative radiation oncology, and coordinated the Rapid Response Radiotherapy Program for people in the advanced stages of cancer. By the time Rachel had completed her last co-op work term she had published seven research articles as a first author and others as co-author, including a study that examined quality of life in patients with bone metastases after radiation treatment. For her outstanding work Rachel won the 2015 Co-op student of the year award for the University of Waterloo, the Province of Ontario, and all of Canada. Dr. McDonald completed her Doctor of Medicine degree at the University of Toronto in 2020 and is now a first-year resident doctor of Internal Medicine at McMaster University.
Moderator
Diane Williams, Lecturer; Associate Director, Undergraduate Studies