Sonya White

Sonya works as a speech-language pathologist for Island Health. She has the privilege of being able to spend time with a huge diversity of clients (ages 5-19), all of whom have different ways of seeing, experiencing, and understanding the world. The ability to listen and learn with others in a clinical setting is a natural extension of the work she has done in academic settings. Sonya has experiencing working to bridge collaboration between community-based institutions and academic institutions; she was first introduced to participatory research during an internship in India in the early 2000s. That work led her to pursue a Master of Arts degree at the University of Toronto, where she designed and led her own community-based qualitative research with members of the Doukhobor community in Canada. She is delighted to now be exploring the use of table top role playing games to support the clinical engagement of youth with mental health needs and neurodevelopmental differences.