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Raissa (she/her) is an award-winning social activist, speaker, and consultant, known for her work on youth engagement in health spaces. Having seen how health inequity affects marginalized populations, Raissa advocates for improving accessibility and equity within the pediatric healthcare sector. With her own experience navigating the complex medical system for her multiple chronic illnesses, she is also passionate about disability inclusion practices in health policy and academia.
She is currently the Executive Director of the Young Canadians Roundtable on Health. She leads over 70+ youth from across Canada in national child health advocacy and projects and leads collaborations with prominent children's organizations.
In her commitment to health equity, Raissa is also a research student with Our Kids’ Health, where she advises on youth engagement research guidelines and co-leading the Digital Health Youth Fellows Program. The fellows program teaches 20+ BIPOC youth the necessary skills to be health literacy champions and create evidence-based health promotion content tailored to their communities.
Activist. Speaker. Lifelong Learner.
Beyond pediatrics, Raissa is a prominent youth expert in child and youth mental health and addictions, she serves on the youth advisory council at Kids Help Phone and previously with the Knowledge Institute for Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions; an advisor with CAMH; and is a Groundbreaker with Frayme. She also served on the inaugural working group for the first national standardization of Child and Youth Mental Health and Addictions with the Standards Council of Canada.
Raissa's leadership extends beyond academia. As a Youth Engagement Specialist at Children First Canada, she designed and delivered the "Young Canadians Parliament" program, engaging over 150 youth nationwide in learning more about their rights.
In recognition of her leadership and impact, Raissa was the youngest person in her cohort to be awarded the 2024 Top 25 Women of Influence by Women of Influence+ and Student of the Year by Ascend Canada. In 2023, she was awarded the Max Keeping Award for Personal Courage by Youth Ottawa and the Canada SDG Youth Awards: Community Health and Wellbeing by the Alberta Council for International Cooperation.
Raissa is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Health Sciences specializing in Population and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. She is also a first-generation settler of Indonesian descent raised on the unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Peoples (Ottawa, Ontario). For fun, she likes to try out new foods, overanalyze medical shows, and hand-building pottery!
