Bethel Samson is a grade 11 student at Colonel By Secondary School in the International Baccalaureate Diplomat Program. Over the past few years, she has competed and consistently won a variety of math and physics contests, and leads the math club and debate clubs at her school. She is also the co-founder of an app called Ocassio that will be released into app store. It helps connects students looking for academic volunteer opportunities to companies looking to hire interns. Bethel is also a member of her school’s trivia team and teaches Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia to students once a week.
Her fierce interest in the field of health science led her to shadow a doctor at the Megbare Senay Hospital during her trip to Ethiopia. There she connected directly with patients and hospital staff but was immensely inspire by the female nurses and doctors that had overcame prejudice on a daily basis, especially in a country where women are not often seen in the STEM fields. This inspired Bethel to fight for the recognition and involvement of women in the STEM fields by joining the feminism club at her school and teaching a summer school course to class with a majority female student body in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Bethel has also helped pharmacists at the Addis Ababa University of Pharmacy research cheap and efficient methods of efficiently creating pain killers that can be sold to the population of Ethiopia at a much cheaper price than North American drugs. Her experiences there led her to continue her efforts in Canada. In September, she created the first ever Women for STEM club at her school.
In the summer of 2017, Bethel will be headed to SHAD at the University of British Columbia, a program for the “Canada’s best and brightest.” Here she will explore her love for the STEM fields, meet with researchers, scientists, business women and learn from them. Bethel has also accepted an offer to be an intern at Virtual Venture, a summer camp for children interested in computer science. There she will meet and be a mentor to younger students that also want to enter the STEM fields.
In the future she hope to become a neuroscientist and continue advocating women’s rights and encouraging other women to join the STEM fields, especially in Developing Nations by joining NGO’s such as Doctor’s Without Borders.
