Vivek Goel appointed to the Order Of Canada

Image credit: Uwaterloo.ca

Dr Vivek Goel was recently appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada “for his contributions as an academic and administrator who is committed to the advancement of public health services, evidence-based health care and research innovation.”

The physician and public health researcher who will take over as the seventh President of University of Waterloo in July this year, was also a university administrator, serving as a special advisor to the President and Provost of the University of Toronto, and as a professor for the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

Goel began his career as an assistant professor with the University of Toronto’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, and was later named the chair of the Department of Health Administration. From 1999 to 2001, he served as the Vice-Provost of the Faculty of Medicine, before becoming the Vice-President and Provost of the university – the first South Asian to hold the post – from 2004 to 2008 when he left the University of Toronto to serve as the first President for Public Health Ontario. Goel returned to the university in 2015 to serve as its Vice-President of Research and Innovation, and Strategic Initiatives, holding the office until 2020.

In June 2020, Goel stepped down from his position at the University of Toronto in order to support the Canadian government’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and the CanCOVID Research Network.

Born in Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh in India, Dr Goel came to Canada with his parents when he was four. Things have changed a lot since his early years in a small town in Quebec where, as one of 10 Indians, he recalls feeling isolated.

“South Asians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese... they have changed the way campuses look,” he says.

Reflecting the shift in demographics, policies have changed, too.

“It is important for people to see that people from all communities can move into significant roles,” he had said in a 2005 interview in Desi News magazine.

And to know that some of the most important lessons are not learnt in a classroom.