Alumna Profile

Josephine Kanu ’16 and the Importance of Adaptability

Josephine Kanu ‘16 knows the importance of adaptability. At just 23, she has lived in seven countries already, and hopes to add to that number. And though she was once an active athlete, multiple injuries and surgeries as a teen left her unable to play sports. But she has drawn important lessons from everywhere she has gone and all she has experienced.

“I’m always looking for new things to challenge me and grow and develop as a person,” Kanu says. She hopes one of those future challenges will be attending medical school: Her plan is to begin applying in 2022. “I always knew that I wanted to be a medical doctor… [but] over time, my interest in where I want to focus on healthcare has definitely changed,” she says.

Her own experiences sparked an interest in becoming an orthopedic surgeon, helping other athletes come back from injuries similar to her own. But while earning her undergrad degree in Biology at the University of British Columbia, Kanu took courses on maternal health that raised her awareness of the urgent need to improve outcomes in that field, especially for Black women like herself. That learning only amplified what she saw and heard during a weeklong school trip to Inuvik, NWT, while studying at Pickering College. She and fellow students had the chance to speak with local Indigenous people about their culture and learned about the continuing impacts of historical events on their communities and health outcomes.

“Being someone from a marginalized community as well, seeing that play out in Canada, and how it’s all hidden in the history—I’m glad that Pickering College gave me that opportunity for me to go beyond and learn,” Kanu says. “Not everyone gets that opportunity.”

So what type of medical career will she pursue? “Right now I’m on the fence … I’m learning other professions and other streams in the healthcare industry,” she says. For now, she works as the BC provincial research coordinator for the Canadian COVID-19 ED Network, a physicianled project that is creating a nationwide database on emergency department admissions of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases. The role is allowing her to explore clinical research, just one of the many other things that interest her. “It’s supposed to help doctors and health care policy-makers make informed decisions about the pandemic and for us to learn more about how the pandemic is affecting marginalized communities, how it’s affecting the nation and the different provinces as a whole.”

Kanu’s embrace of new challenges means every day of work is a steppingstone to whatever comes next. “Taking things one step at a time, dealing with them as they come… I think that’s definitely going to help me in the future and in my career.”

“I’m always looking for new things to challenge me and grow and develop as a person.”