Zoey Zhang: A leader in diversity and inclusion
Zoey Zhang (BASc ’24, Biomedical Engineering) has been awarded the prestigious 2024 Pearl Sullivan Emerging Global Leaders Award as a testament to her exceptional leadership and commitment to engineering excellence.
Established by Sanjay Malaviya in honor of Pearl Sullivan, the former dean of Waterloo Engineering and a trailblazer for women in the field, this award recognizes a graduating undergraduate student for their outstanding contributions to the Waterloo Engineering community.
“This award allows me to celebrate my achievements from undergrad, while also providing me $50,000 to support advancing my career and make an impactful difference in the world”, Zhang explains. Known for her dedication to fostering inclusivity and advocating for equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) within Engineering, Zhang exemplifies the award's vision of empowering future leaders committed to improving the human condition.
As a cohort engineering class representative as well as Director, Commissioner, and then Vice President of Communications for Waterloo’s Engineering Society (EngSoc), Zhang has consistently demonstrated her commitment to creating supportive environments within Waterloo and beyond.
“I thoroughly enjoyed co-chairing the Conference on Diversity in 2023. Diversity enriches the educational experience, and we can learn so much from experiences, beliefs, and perspectives that are different from our own.”, said Zhang. “People deserve to feel belonging and inclusion in Engineering and we gain so much from allowing diverse perspectives in the room.”
The conference, which brought together about 150 students from across the country, featured more than 20 sessions focused on understanding and improving diversity in engineering. It addressed topics such as advocating for EDI in the workforce, exploring differences in perspectives and understanding the variety of cultures within the engineering community.
Reflecting on her extensive advocacy work, Zhang shared, “It's about listening and understanding how to advocate for others empathetically, especially when you don't necessarily belong to those marginalized communities. Sometimes we need to unlearn our existing biases to be able to learn and grow.”
As a student representative for the Canadian Federation for Engineering Students (CFES), Zhang represented 80,000 engineering students, driving data-driven advocacy initiatives. With a proven record of leadership through participation in extracurricular and volunteer activities at the University of Waterloo, Zhang has demonstrated her potential to grow as a leader, inspiring others to generate change.
Funds from the award will be used as a financial catalyst to kick start Zoey’s lifelong commitment to excellence and leadership, “I plan to use the award funds to attend graduate school, pursuing a MASc or PhD in Biomedical Engineering, after working in industry for a few years. I also plan to use the funds to support and engage in STEM outreach programs for marginalized communities.”, said Zhang.
Zhang will begin her job in California in August as a Technical Marketing Engineer at NVIDIA, where she will be developing the latest bleeding edge AI projects from NVIDIA and transforming them into a marketable product for customer use.
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