Bharati Sethi

There were early days in Canada when Bharati Sethi’s PhD dreams must have seemed worlds away. But even when employers at her waitressing and cleaning jobs laughed at the notion that she would one day be a professor, Bharati kept moving toward her goals.
Now a Londoner for two years, an award-winning researcher named one of London’s “diversity and inclusion champions” and listed among the Royal Bank’s “top 25 immigrants to Canada,” Bharati was an aspiring Hotel Management student in Montreal when she first moved to Canada from Mumbai 20 years ago. 
As her status shifted in Canada from a foreign student to a foreign worker, she had to overcome many new obstacles – racism being the biggest constant challenge, and continuing to this day – and she says she realized many of the hardships that she and so many other newcomers faced were directly connected to policies. With that awareness, Bharati felt compelled to do more research that could result in policy changes that would have a direct impact on future hardships.  As an assistant professor of social work at King’s College, Western University in London, she works directly with students and other academics to achieve the greater goal of making this country more inclusive.
For her thesis – titled “Do You See What I See?” – Bharati provided cameras to immigrant women and asked them to capture images that they felt illustrated their experiences in Canada. The project has been exhibited in several Ontario cities and received praise for empowering women who are marginalized by giving them an opportunity to tell their own stories using photographs.
As a London diversity and inclusion champion, Bharati provides input to the city on how to be inclusive. She reminds governments at all levels that the health of a community depends on the health of all its residents, including newcomers and immigrants.
And as someone who has struggled, yet continued to focus on moving toward her goals, her advice to newcomers is to do the same.  “If you stop, you know for sure that you will not reach your goal,” says Bharati. “If you need to rest, rest for a bit, if you need to crawl, then crawl, but always keep moving.”

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