Back to Awards Index

Two Winners of the Report on Business Changemakers Award from The Globe and Mail at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Toronto, February 26, 2021 – Two award winners from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management were announced today for the 2021 Report on Business Changemakers award.

Sonia Kang, a professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Rotman School of Management, and Sonia Sennik, executive director of Creative Destruction Lab and the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, are two of fifty inaugural recipients of the award. Prof. Kang was cited for her actionable research on diversity and inclusion and Sennik for their work leading the CDL, a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies.

Changemakers is a new editorial award program produced by The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business magazine. Its intent is to showcase the emerging leaders transforming business today.

Report on Business solicited nominations for the Changemakers award in late 2020. Winners were selected by The Globe and Mail’s award-winning editorial team based their ideas, accomplishments and impact, as determined by their nominations, subsequent interviews and reference checks.

Editorial coverage of all 2021 Changemakers can be found in the March 2021 issue of Report on Business magazine and online at tgam.ca/Changemakers.

Prof. Sonia Kang holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management at the University of Toronto, where she is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the Rotman School of Management’s Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE) and Chief Scientist, Organizations in the Behavioural Economics in Action Research Centre at Rotman (BEAR). She earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Alberta, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Toronto, and completed a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University.

Her research explores the challenges and opportunities of identity, diversity, and inclusion. She take a novel approach by harnessing the power of behavioral insights and organizational design to disrupt systems, processes, and structures that block the path toward diversity and inclusion for individuals, organizations, and society.

Some recent themes investigated in her research include diversity and inclusion in STEM and medicine; using choice architecture to eliminate the gender gap in competition; disclosure of designated group status under the Canadian Employment Equity Act; the effects of high and low power on performance; the interpretation of equality rights under the Canadian Constitution; the effectiveness of pro-diversity statements; and the decision to reveal or conceal race and gender cues when navigating the labor market. Her research on “resume whitening” won two best paper awards and was recently ranked #3 on Financial Times’ global top 100 list of “business school research with social impact.”

Prof. Kang’s research has been published widely in top-tier academic journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, The Lancet, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and Annual Review of Psychology, and is frequently featured in media outlets such as The Harvard Business Review, The Financial Times, Forbes, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and on CBC Radio.

Sonia Sennik is the Executive Director of Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies. They are responsible for the CDL’s strategic, operational and programmatic leadership, coordination and oversight to ensure the success of the Lab and its ventures across nine university-based locations in Canada, US, UK and France. The organization operates sites at the University of Toronto, University of Oxford, Georgia Tech, HEC Paris, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of British Columbia, University of Montreal, University of Calgary and Dalhousie University. Sennik is also the Executive Director of the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, a not-for-profit organization focused on developing a cost-effective system for reopening the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic in the absence of widely available vaccines or treatments.

Having spent a decade managing large-scale capital projects (up to $500M) at Hatch Ltd., a leading global engineering firm, Sennik is well-established in guiding interdisciplinary teams of professionals working on multiple, complex projects. Their particular areas of interest include process optimization, finessing workplace culture, mentoring future leaders and actualizing the potential of their ideas.
In 2020, they founded the Sonia Sennik Resilience Fund at McMaster University to award an annual $8,000 entrance scholarship for an engineering student who has shown grit and strength of character in their life – whether that’s at school, at home, on the athletic field, or in their creative pursuits. This commitment grew into a $300,000+ endowed fund with more than 40 start-up founders, CEOs, world-leading scientists, engineers, and economists contributing to the effort.

Sennik is vice-chair of the board of directors for ParticipACTION – a 49 year old organization dedicated to helping Canadians sit less and move more. They were the head coach of Rugby Ontario Senior Women’s Team from 2016 to 2018, winning bronze, silver and gold at the Canadian Rugby Championships. Sennik is a proud graduate of the MBA program at Rotman School of Management and was the first-ever recipient of the Social Impact Award. They received the Rotman Emerging Leader Award to recognize their influential leadership talent to motivate, mentor and inspire others to reach their potential and also hold a B.Eng degree from McMaster University.

The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s foremost news media company, leading the national discussion and causing policy change through brave and independent journalism since 1844. With our award-winning coverage of business, politics and national affairs, The Globe and Mail newspaper reaches 5.9 million readers every week in our print or digital formats, and Report on Business magazine reaches 2.1 million readers in print and digital every issue. Our investment in innovative data science means that as the world continues to change, so does The Globe. The Globe and Mail is owned by Woodbridge, the investment arm of the Thomson family.

Rotman School of Management
The Rotman School of Management is part of the University of Toronto, a global centre of research and teaching excellence at the heart of Canada’s commercial capital. Rotman is a catalyst for transformative learning, insights and public engagement, bringing together diverse views and initiatives around a defining purpose: to create value for business and society. For more information, visit www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

-30-

Ken McGuffin
Manager, Media Relations
Rotman School of Management
Voice: (416) 946-3818
E-mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca