“True leadership isn’t about being in charge – it’s about listening and offering support when it matters most”

Saniyah Farzeen talked with the right person about her plans to leave her program just halfway through the first term.

The unthinkable had happened to the first-year integrated science student – her mid-terms had not gone according to plan. She was struggling academically, something that had never happened before. She’d been placed in the gifted program heading into Grade 4 and stayed all the way through to Grade 12. She’d always been a straight A student.

Earlier in the term, associate professor Chad Harvey had brought all of the stressed and anxious first year students together for an impromptu intervention. He told them to reach out if they were ever feeling overwhelmed. So that’s who Farzeen sought out to break the news.

“I told Dr. Harvey that I was done with the iSci program. It wasn’t for me.”

Harvey listened – “he was genuinely sad about what I was going through” – and then told Farzeen to give herself some grace. He reminded her this was her first time away from home. She clearly belonged at Mac and had earned her spot in the program. He pointed out that the mid-terms counted for very little of the final marks for a reason – many students struggled with their first exams.

“My high school teachers had warned us that university professors don’t care about their students, that we’d be on our own. Dr. Harvey proved that wasn’t true.”

Farzeen heeded Harvey’s advice and stayed with the program. Her marks improved and she found her footing. But she had more news to break, this time to her parents.

They’d driven in from Toronto for a visit. Farzeen announced she no longer wanted to go to medical school to become a pediatrician. Her parents reacted exactly as Farzeen had expected. “Going to medical school had been my idea all along, not something I was pushed into. My parents have always been totally supportive of any path I choose. They have always cared more about the kind of person that I am than about the specific career I wanted to pursue – that’s something I deeply value.”

Farzeen and her older sister were told above all else to be good people doing good things. “My parents said they would have failed us if we weren’t giving back and helping others.”

So instead of medical school, Farzeen set her sights on McMaster’s Master of Science in Global Health.  “I’m really passionate about how health systems affect people’s lives and the inequalities that exist within them. Working at the intersection of science, community and policy feels like the best path for addressing those gaps.”

She also opted not to complete a concentration in the integrated science program and instead pursue an interdisciplinary minor in Social Justice and Inclusive Communities. “Coming from a marginalized community, I’ve always wanted to reflect on what I didn’t see much of growing up.”

Farzeen had been acutely aware of the unequal distribution of wealth, opportunities and privileges from an early age. She was born and raised in Flemingdon Park in Toronto, a lower-income neighbourhood of mostly immigrants and refugees. Her parents had come to Canada from Bangladesh in 2003. Both had master’s degrees and Farzeen’s father would return to school to earn a second master’s degree. For a time, Farzeen’s family got by on her father’s income as a teaching assistant.

“My parents came to Canada with very little and worked hard to give us everything,” says Farzeen. “While we struggled at the start, I didn’t feel the weight of it growing up. They made it a priority to give my sister and me every opportunity they could, and that shaped so much of who I am today. Our mom took us to every imaginable extracurricular anywhere in the city every day of the week.”

When Farzeen was identified as a gifted learner, she was enrolled in a different school in a high income neighbourhood. The discrepancies were jarring. Her new middle school had the money to subsidize Toronto Blue Jays games and annual overnight trips for all the students. Her Grade 5 graduation ceremony was held at a golf and country club.

Back in her neighborhood, social inequalities showed up everywhere she looked. She’d wait in the doctor’s office and watch how families who didn’t speak English were treated. She had friends who couldn’t do afterschool extracurriculars because they were looking after their siblings or working part-time jobs to help their families make ends meet. Nothing was done to help the community when gentrification took hold in the neighbourhood, pushing out affordable housing while condo towers went up and rents soared.

Farzeen went to a high school that drew students from both lower and upper income neighbourhoods. In Grade 11, Farzeen co-founded a food bank at her school and helped raise $75,000 to stock the shelves. Students in need discretely placed orders online. Neurodivergent classmates packaged up the food as part of their life skills classes. Farzeen recently went back to her high school and found that the food bank’s still running. “It’s filling a real need at the school and in the community.”

At the end of her first year at Mac, Farzeen applied to the Susan Cunningham Science Leadership Academy. She’d been student council president in Grade 12, volunteered at Sick Kids and other hospitals and was part involved with BacharLorai Global  – a non-profit that empowers Bangladeshis worldwide. She’d spent the summer as a research assistant at the University of Toronto and was now a teaching assistant in a first-year nuclear technology applications course at Mac and a research assistant in the DeGroote School of Business. She thought the academy would help her take the next step as a leader.

The academy’s application form didn’t ask Farzeen to attach her transcripts – instead, she was asked to explain why she was applying, what excited her most about the academy and how she thought it would make her a better leader.

“Growing up in a low-income neighbourhood, I saw firsthand how limited access to resources affected the people I care about,” Farzeen wrote in her application. “I remember the frustration of watching friends and family struggle to get the help they needed, and that experience motivated me to step up and make a difference. I’ve learned that true leadership isn’t about being in charge, it’s about listening and offering support when it matters most.”

Farzeen was one of 25 students accepted into the inaugural class.

Some of her friends told her she was wasting her time – how would being in the academy improve her marks and help her get into grad school? “I’m hoping they’ll apply next year when they see everything that I’m doing and learning.”

She’s already had her first one-on-one coaching session. “I went into it thinking it was going to be like a job interview or an exam where there’s right and wrong answers. My coach told me this wasn’t a test and I didn’t need to prove myself.”

She also went on a nature hike with the other students in the academy, senior McMaster leaders and Susan Cunningham. Farzeen and Cunningham struck up a conversation. “Ms. Cunningham was so down-to-earth, supportive and inspiring. The ways that she’s giving back are inspiring me to do the same. I hope I can be a role model as a successful South Asian woman in STEM and be in a position where I can give back to communities like the one I grew up in. There are so many systemic gaps that need closing.”