rachelaarons8@hotmail.com

Rachel (she/her/hers) is a writer, educator and DEI enthusiast who majored in marketing and finance at York University’s Schulich School of Business. Her experiences at business school, working as a marketing and finance research assistant, and while competing internationally on Schulich’s Case Competition Team have inspired her to adopt a practical, business- and solution-oriented approach when using African research to address modern social and political issues. As a former member of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) DEI team, she has published the “How to Support Racialized Employees in Times of Tragedy” toolkit and has drafted the “How to Be a More Inclusive Leader” toolkit to instil a culture of diversity and equity companywide. Her personal and secondary experiences with inequity through teaching students of African descent Black history at the Markham African Caribbean Canadian Association (MACCA) and defending low-income youth via legal aid at a Toronto criminal law firm, have fuelled her passion to empower Black youth with knowledge of prosperous pre-contact African civilizations. While pursuing her undergraduate studies, she focused on researching diverse topics including the role of Women in Ancient Africa, religion in East Africa, politics in the Aksumite Empire, and Ethiopia & Liberia as uncolonized nations. In her postgraduate research, she would like to explore the history of African politics, economics and mobility in the colonial age, and expressive culture and belief systems during the pre-colonial age.