Amal Kilani

← Champions for Cultural Diversity 2020 Winners

Youth from diverse backgrounds and visible minorities struggle to find mentors and role models in fields such as information technology, and this is especially the case for females. As a result, many see no true path to these rewarding and lucrative fields in the knowledge economy.

Enter Amal Kilani, a programmer for the provincial government who has shown that these are far from insurmountable barriers. Giving freely of her time, she draws on her Masters in Engineering to provide coaching in coding and robotics to those who may never have dreamed that this could be their future. Through Labo-des jeunes (Youth Lab), a non-profit organization whose objective is to expose young people and young adults to the technological and entrepreneurial challenges of the day, she teaches them the motto that has guided her to success – “Invest in yourself”.

When she’s not busy programming at work or teaching others to code, she’s ensuring newcomers don’t strike language barriers by helping CAFi run their English conversation circles.

As a young visionary who is passionately sharing that vision with so many others, she is exactly the kind of model that the Youth category was designed to recognize.