The Ryerson Career & Co-op Centre (RCCC) recently signed on as an educational partner with
Accelerate Her Future (AHF), a career accelerator providing tailored programs for self-identifying Black, Indigenous and women of colour (BIWOC) to launch their careers in business and tech while building networks of solidarity, allyship and action.
Launched in 2019, AHF addresses the gap in the recruitment and advancement of BIWOC in the corporate and tech sectors, exacerbated further by the pandemic. AHF envisions a Canada where Black, Indigenous and women of colour are fully participating at all levels of leadership in business and tech. AHF introduced its signature Fellowship Circle in 2021, a uniquely designed by-application 10-week program giving students and recent grads the foundation they’ll need to accelerate their careers in business and tech. AHF has received more than 200 applications for it’s two 2021 cohorts and anticipates having 100 early-career BIWOC complete the program from across 5 provinces in its first year.
Chloe Maceda, a third-year undergraduate student in the Computer Science program at Ryerson was one of 53 Fellows from across Canada who completed AHF’s inaugural Fellowship Circle winter 2021 cohort.
“After reading AHF’s vision, missions and values statements to empower and provide BIWOC opportunities and resources to advance their careers, I knew I wanted to take this opportunity and applied right away!” recalled Chloe. “It was a pleasure spending 10 weeks as a Fellow with peers and mentors, and taking on the valuable lessons I’ve learned. The program helped me build meaningful connections, a strong skill set, and an internship at IBM!”
“At AHF, we believe Canada is filled with ambitious and talented young women, like Chloe, who have the power to advance their careers when given access to influential networks, mentorship, allyship, tools, skills and opportunities that create the conditions to thrive at a pivotal time in their lives,” explained Dr. Golnaz Golnaraghi, Founder of AHF. “RCCC has been a huge supporter of our work since our inception in 2019 and we’re very excited to formalize this partnership in order to deepen our impact in the coming years.”
“The Ryerson Career & Co-op Centre is pleased to partner with AHF to support our Black, Indigenous and racialized women-identifying students and recent grads” noted Emily Jones, Interim Director. “We build careers for life and are committed to providing our student and recent alumni community with innovative career development options to excel in the workplace. We believe through AHF, our students and recent grads are able to have greater access to meaningful mentorship, career learning tailored to their needs, network-building and better pathways to employment during their academic journey.”
Nadia Alick, AHF’s Community Engagement Lead works closely with academic institutions across Canada to raise awareness among students and recent graduates. “Together we are building the community with and for early-career BIWOC to be future leaders in the workplace and to be their authentic selves,” explained Nadia. “We couldn’t do this work without the support of our academic partners like RCCC. I speak for the AHF team and many of our mentors in saying that we wish we had a program and community like AHF when we were in school.”
For more information about Accelerate Her Future, click
here.
For more information about Ryerson Career & Co-op Centre, click here.
Photo by
Christina @ wocintechchat.com on
Unsplash
