Why did you enroll in the Faculty of Health at 91��ɫ?
I’ve always been really interested in  making my own community healthier. While growing up, my mom had so many health-related books around the house, and I was always really drawn to those. I really liked science, so health was just the natural choice. I wanted to be a doctor from a young age. It was always the back of my mind but I didn’t grow up knowing doctors, especially Black doctors, so I didn’t really have any role models in that field. I just knew that I wanted to do something in healthcare.

I came to Toronto because I wanted to have a multicultural experience. In my previous school I was one of a few Black students, and I wanted to have a Black health education experience, but I also wanted to experience the diversity and culture that Toronto offers. So that's what prompted me to go to 91��ɫ for the psychology program.

What did you do after graduating from 91��ɫ?
After I graduated from 91��ɫ, for a few years I worked in government and labour relations.  I started volunteering in an inner-city program in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood, which I really liked, and the community engagement piece was so important to me. I ended up working for a nephrologist at Sunnybrook Hospital where I met younger doctors and residents and then I met a Black doctor at a Jane-Finch walk-in clinic. I was 25 at the time, and I finally got to see possible opportunities for myself. That’s when I decided to do a second undergraduate honours degree in nutrition to prepare myself for the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

What part of the medical field were you most interested in?
I have always wanted to be in primary care; I'm a huge, huge, huge, proponent of prevention. I always wanted to be the first stop in a patient's healthcare journey, dealing with high blood pressure or diabetes – I wanted to reduce their risks. I think in terms of completing degrees in psychology and nutrition before medical school were really good training grounds because a lot of prevention is about behavior change. I wanted to help patients reduce their blood glucose and blood pressure, or increase their physical activity, or reduce their intake of processed food. And I think family medicine is really the best place to do that. I just want to help keep people well and healthy and feeling good and be able to enjoy their lives for as long as possible.

So right now, you’re helping address misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine through social media.
Yes, a journalist I know in Halifax reached out to me after she noticed me  commenting on social media to those who are misinformed about the virus and the vaccine. I was horrified by what I was reading, and since then, my phone has been ringing off the hook talking to people who have questions. One example is when someone comes to me saying, “Hey, my daughter's is hesitant about the vaccine and she would really like to talk to you.” For anyone who wants to talk to me, I'm going to engage and just and try and listen to their concerns.

Where is most of your focus?
I am particularly interested in vaccine concerns from the Black community, my community, because I understand why Black people are a hesitant and for good reason—medicine has done bad things to Black people. So, I completely understand that. That is why, if someone has genuine questions and they're suspicious, I want to take the time and go through all of their questions and answer them; to make them feel safe and heard, not dismissed.

It was after the vaccine started becoming widely available that I realized  people with concerns were getting their answers on Facebook, so I took it upon myself to dispel these myths. Some of these threads had 500 comments, and the vast majority were comments like “I’m not getting the vaccine because it’s not safe and it will change my genetics or cause infertility.” Nothing was based on fact, just conjecture. So, I decided to engage and help whenever I could. I have been trying my best to be kind, to let them know that I understand what they’re saying, and they have a right to feel concerned.

What are you hoping for the future of your career?
I hope I can influence other young Black people as a doctor. I want them to feel that this career is accessible, that they feel supported. I hope that by seeing me, that they realize they are just as capable of this work.

The post Alumni Spotlight: Tiffany Richards (BSc ’09) appeared first on Division of Advancement - Alumni and Friends.

As with most things in a post-COVID-19 world, grocery shopping will never be the same. The simple act of picking up groceries on the way home from work feels like a distant memory, with the experience shifting to a weekly ordeal marked with long lines, sparse shelves and lengthy wait times for online orders as a result of this crisis.

But the fact that consumers are now acutely aware of their supply chain –and the front-line workers who kept it going during this time—is a sign that the grocery retail industry is being recognized for its essential service.

“Grocery shopping, from the consumer side, was viewed as either a task or joy to do,” says Mary Dalimonte (BA ’79), an industry veteran with over 40 years of experience in grocery retail in Canada. “Now, consumers are aware that every aspect of food acquisition is critical to absolutely everybody. From growing and processing to procurement and distribution, to finally ending up in the customer’s home, [this pandemic] has really brought to light for the consumer that it’s not as easy as food showing up on the shelves of a grocery store.”

Dalimonte retired in 2018 as the senior vice president of merchandising and commercial programs at Sobeys Inc., after 11 years with the company. Prior to that, she spent more than 30 years with Loblaw Companies Limited in increasingly senior positions, including vice president of store operations, general manager of retail operations and senior director of multi business unit development. She got her first job as a part-time cashier at a Loblaws in North 91��ɫ, while in high school and continued to work while completing her BA in Sociology at 91��ɫ.

She’s currently president of Mary Dalimonte Inc. Retail and Food Transformations, a retail consultancy, and serves as a board director of Giant Tiger Stores Ltd., and the Italian Chamber of Commerce. Dalimonte remains committed to serving her community as academy mentor at Women in Food Industry Management and mentor leader at the Network of Executive Women organization.

Throughout her career, Dalimonte worked through some of the most challenging times in the industry: the 2003 blackout in Toronto, the ice storm in 2008, as well as store closures due to Hepatitis C infection, to name a few. “This has now amplified the past to extremes the industry has never experienced,” she says about the COVID-19 pandemic. “All the processes they went through, in one way or another, mirror what we’re going through today, only at a much more profound and severe [scale], with many more complex issues to handle at once.”

She credits the industry’s preparedness as well as effective communications from government officials and the stores themselves with dispelling fears of food shortages and avoiding panic-buying among shoppers.

“This has and will continue to change and transform the industry,” she says, from both a supplier/retailer and consumer perspective. Nuanced factors such as millions of Canadians suddenly working from home, the rise in online shopping and changes in merchandising to consider food safety have forced the acceleration of business operations and transformations across all levels.

As for the consumer shopper experience itself, whether that’s online or in brick-and-mortar stores will need to be that much more meaningful and connected to the consumer needs going forward. “It’s going to have to be a highly differentiated experience to gain consumer confidence and loyalty,” she says. “‘Normal’ as we knew it in the past is gone. The ‘new normal’ is forming and changing daily.”

To read the latest information on 91��ɫ’s comprehensive COVID-19 response, visit .

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It's important to recognize that individuals can experience a wide range of reactions–so there's no right or wrong in terms of the particular feelings you may have. What is important is being able to bring a sense of perspective so that negative emotions don’t escalate beyond an ability to manage them. For many of us, keeping this sense of perspective will be a challenge and so those individuals also have to practice self-compassion–the opposite of being critical of oneself.

Some of the common reactions you may experiencing right now could be:

• Anxiety, worry, panic
• Anger
• Feelings of loss or grief
• Hyper vigilance to your health
• Social withdrawal
• Skepticism or bravado/excitement

Here are some strategies to help you manage.

1. Acknowledgement and evaluation. It's important to acknowledge whatever emotion you are feeling and evaluate its usefulness: “It's understandable that I am worried or sad or don’t want to get out of bed given this pandemic, and is this emotion/behaviour helping me?”

For example, a little worry can be very useful because it might help you to follow the important guidelines to wash your hands and not touch your face, and to keep two metres away from others when you must go out in public. However, a lot of worry that leads to panic attacks or hyper vigilance is not helpful and needs to be countered.

Think about what you might say to a friend that would assist them to find the strength to counter these unhelpful thoughts and gain some perspective.

2. Find activities to complete that you have control over, and can give you a sense of mastery or effectiveness. Intentionally engaging in activities such as household chores, listening to music, or watching a TV show, can counter the negative emotion propelling you on a downward spiral. “I am going to help myself stop worrying by watching my favourite TV show.”

3. Develop a “worry/sadness” box. This is another useful strategy to help you develop control over negative thinking. You can have an actual box or imaginary one. The idea is to write down the thought(s) circulating in your brain that you can’t get rid of, and imagine putting them in a box as a way of creating some distance. You can go back to the thought at any time, or you can simply use the space created by writing down the thought and moving onto other activities.

4. Adopt a mindset of gratitude. Research has indicated that identifying three things each day that you are grateful for can have a positive impact on mood.

5. Practice mindfulness. There are guided meditations on YouTube that will help you focus and break the worry or sadness spiral. Walking meditations can also be useful; to do this on your next walk, consciously pay attention to what you are seeing and have an inner dialogue about it. "I see a black car; the sidewalk has a big crack; the grass is getting greener." This will keep your thoughts focused in the here and now, and not on worry or sadness.

6. Control how much media you consume. Particularly if this is a trigger for starting the worry or sadness cycle.

7. Watch how you speak. Our language impacts how we feel, so pay attention to your inner dialogue and see if you can replace descriptors like “awful", "terrible", or "scary”, with “interesting" or "not helpful”. Self-compassionate language falls in this category: “I know that I am worrying a lot and I am trying to take small steps to counter it.”

8. Keep connected. We are social beings and the accurate phrase for how we should handle this virus is: “physical distancing with social connection.” Our social contacts can provide support, encouragement and distraction, so please remember to reach out.

Remember, change is hard. Set small goals for yourself as you try to manage your emotions during this difficult time, and be kind to yourself.

Louise Hartley is the Director of the .

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Less than six months ago, Nicole Bradbury (BSCN ’19) was awarded her degree at 91��ɫ's fall convocation for her Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Today, as a registered nurse on the Nursing Resource Team at St. Michael’s Hospital, Bradbury works at the hospital’s COVID-19 assessment centre in downtown Toronto, where people are screened and tested for the novel coronavirus. According to the latest numbers from the World Health Organization, there are now over 400,000 reported cases of COVID-19 globally.

“I have had the opportunity to work in this centre over the last few weeks and it has been a really interesting experience,” said Bradbury. As the number of cases continue to grow in Canada, Bradbury said that staff is preparing for an influx of patients. “I find a lot of my job has been providing health education and reassurance to many who come in with anxieties and fears about COVID-19, which has been a real privilege during this uneasy and stressful time,” she said.

Adjusting to life in the working world is a challenge for any recent graduate. Battling a pandemic in her first year on the job is a uniquely extraordinary feat, but one that Bradbury feels well prepared for. “Nursing’s actually my second career,” she said. Bradbury came to 91��ɫ in 2015 to pursue nursing after working for nearly a decade as a registered massage therapist in a rehabilitation clinic setting. “I decided I wanted to take my career in another direction, as I enjoyed the helping aspect of doing massage therapy but wanted to be able to help people in a different, more involved way.”

The at 91��ɫ appealed to Bradbury as it’s designed for students who have completed a university degree and are making the switch into nursing. “The program really celebrated what each student could bring to the table from their life experience and harnessed them in a way that could help us build a better community, and to support each other, which is important because teamwork and collaboration are integral parts of being a nurse.”

She credits the School of Nursing faculty, as well as Stong College, with supporting her and her peers, and instilling confidence to take initiative in the clinical setting. “They were there when things got hard during the program and always encouraged us to reach for our highest potential.”

Despite the frenetic pace of her work life lately, Bradbury finds her role on the front line incredibly rewarding, especially during this time. “It is an honour to be a support system for patients and families during their hospital admissions, and use my nursing knowledge to be an advocate for their care,” she said.

To read the latest information on 91��ɫ’s comprehensive COVID-19 response, visit

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