GRANT’S DESI ACHIEVER

AN AGENT OF MEANINGFUL CHANGE

Sabina Vohra-Miller, social activist, philanthropist.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

 The University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Health launched their Institute for Pandemics with a $1-million gift from the Vohra-Miller Foundation.

A $75,000 grant to the Emily Stowe Society at Women’s College Hospital.

$25,000 to support Indigenous health via the Anishnawbe Health Foundation.

A $75,000 grant to the Crossroads Refugee Clinic at Women’s College Hospital.

$25,000 to The Daily Bread Food Bank.

$20,000 donation to the Montreal West Children’s Library.

$25,000 to support Lymphoma Canada.

Other donations and grants ranging from $5000 to $15,000 to the Stop Community Food Centre, the Seva Food Bank, the Toronto Foundation, to name a few.

All of it, personally funded.

It would be easy to picture someone on a cheque-signing spree.

Not so, says Sabina Vohra-Miller, who set up the foundation with her husband Craig.

“I am not the sort of person who cuts a cheque and walks away. I want to be involved. I’m interested in meaningful change, not band-aid solutions. I want to leave behind a better place for our son.”

Vohra-Miller’s drive to give back stems from personal hardships she’s faced.

She came to Canada in 2001 from Dubai. Knowing her middle-class parents couldn’t afford the tuition fees for international students, she’d accompanied a friend to a university fair just for a lark. There, she met a student counsellor from the Uof T and fell in love with the world he was describing.

With no clue as to how she would fund her dream, she began preparing for her SATs. Her conservative parents had assumed that she would go back to India for her graduation and then get married. When they discovered their daughter had other plans, and that she was serious about them, they decided to support her and applied for immigration.

But the early years were very hard on the young student. She dealt with precarious housing and shares that she went to bed hungry many nights.

“No one should have to do that, it was brutal. That’s why I support food banks, they fill such an important need.”

Along the way she met wonderful people, too, and “picked up random scholarships,” as she puts it.

“People took a chance on a newcomer. I was selected for research assistant positions at CAMH and Princess Margaret Hospital. They kept me on because they understood the situation I was in. It enabled me to complete my undergrad, to pay tuition, rent... It was a long, complicated journey, and I am so grateful for all the help I received. That’s why I support Indigenous causes because I became aware of what was taken from them.”

Her husband Craig led marketing and product and development  for Kijiji before joining Shopify in 2011, when it was a small startup based in Ottawa. He led the growth of the ecommerce company, also taking on the role of Chief Product Officer. He left Shopify in late 2020, not long after Shopify had become Canada’s largest company. His current focus is on climate change.

They started small, through a donor-advised fund with the Toronto Foundation in 2018.

Sabina Vohra-Miller with husband Craig and son Aavir. Image credit: JANICE LEMPERA (janicelempera.com).

She attended lectures, read up on various causes and organizations to ensure that their money was doing the maximum good. And donated anonymously, at first.

“The reason we put our name to it is because I realized that there are very few people who look like me who are doing this. I wanted to change that. Representation matters.”

As they built on their understanding of the need, their involvement grew and the Vohra-Miller Foundation came into being in March 2020.

“Just as the pandemic hit,” she says. “We were working with Adalsteinn Brown on other health initiatives at Dalla Lana when this idea of the pandemic institute came up. I said this is perfect, we will back you.”

As the lead donor, she is very invested in the world’s first academic centre dedicated to preventing, preparing for, fighting and recovering from the current and future pandemics.

“In ensuring that we were equitable in our approach, that we took key learnings and are prepared,” says Vohra-Miller. “As a South Asian, I don’t want our community to be left behind, bearing the brunt.”

With a background in clinical pharmacology and toxicology, she values healthcare but is aware of the systemic racism and structural factors that impact many communities and leads to inequities in health. She is passionate about making sustainable, systemic, meaningful and intentional changes to healthcare in Canada.

“I’m a huge believer of the community-based approach,” she says. “It’s a great way to leverage the trust in relationships. A talk-down approach doesn’t meet people where they are.”

To this end, they helped fund community health centres, mobile health units and community ambassadors. The pilot projects were so successful that the province invested in them to take the idea further.

BIPOC projects are close to her heart and the next big amount, she says, is earmarked for Indigenous organizations. The other bucket is food security and support for food banks.

With Women Moving Millions –  a community of 340 individuals who each make a minimum $1million commitment to organizations and initiatives benefiting women and girls – she is working on a pan-Canadian maternal health program. She sits on the investment committee of GROW, and last year her contribution helped support projects to tackle intimate partner violence.

Vohra-Miller is the go-to person for vaccine-related info in the South Asian community, and has been very vocal about the inequities in the vaccine rollout.

“It is one hundred per cent a system issue, a failure to make things humane,” she states unequivocally. “The most impacted were those doing essential jobs. We weren’t protecting workers. Cases were being blamed on Diwali gatherings, but thousands were affected in factories and warehouses and it took weeks to shut those places down. There’s a history of this, it just came into sharp focus, became amplified during COVID. Brampton is underfunded where healthcare is concerned. We have to acknowledge how they were left behind if we are to build trust.”

Passionate about science education and advocacy, she focuses her efforts to counter the avalanche of mis- and dis-information on social media. In evidence based parenting groups, she explains scientific information by breaking it down into easy-to-understand posts using consensus-based guidelines developed by global health and paediatric agencies.

“It began when I became a mom and entered the world of mommy-bloggers!” she says with an infectious laugh. “I used to work in drug development and so I know a little about vaccines and how they work. Social media is a swamp of misinformation and I began by addressing some of the doubts of parents in the groups I was in, talking to people who were on the fence. That’s where I learnt how to communicate about stuff like this. Because so often it’s about emotion, not necessarily logic. One can’t be dismissive of those fears.”

She’s faced backlash from anti-vaxxers, received hate mail. People were connecting with her mother-in-law on social media to tell her what a horrible person Vohra-Miller was. The very supportive  Craig got concerned.

“Anti-vax campaigns have huge funding,” she reveals. “I’m not talking about individuals who have genuine doubts, but think about it, all those alternative health products and services are not free, it’s a huge industry. And they fight to protect their turf.”

Vohra-Miller created a fact-based, educational page called Unambiguous Science where she discusses new information in a non-sensational and non-politicized manner and can spend hours answering questions. There are 30,000 members in one parenting group alone that she moderates. 

As a young mom with a foundation to run and all of these initiatives, there aren’t enough hours to her day.

“I’m often up until one in the morning. I get so much of my work done when everyone is in bed, that’s my quiet time! But I need to do a better job of time management. When work-life lines blur, one can’t turn things

off or decompress.”

She admits to not having taken a weekend off since last October. And yet she keeps at it because it’s so rewarding. One of her posts, on Moderna vs Pfizer, had over a million views. People were forwarding it and sharing it with others. A few came back to her in a roundabout way.

“I recognized the infographics and thought, this is cool!” she laughs.

The Canada she envisions for her four-year-old son Aavir is equitable, respectful and giving. One in which every single Canadian flourishes and is not held back based on where they come from or what’s in their bank account.

“As times goes by, there’s more and more emphasis on the individual. But true success is achieved when the entire community thrives. We want to raise Aavir to be an empathetic, compassionate child,”

Vohra-Miller tells newcomers to hold on to their dreams.

“Very often, they are in a grind, a constant struggle, there’s no time to even look up. But that is when we have to remember our dreams and aspirations, we have to dream about what a different life could be like. The BIPOC community, for instance, has been stripped of its ability to dream.

“I know what that’s like. I dreamt of being a doctor, but it was a dream I couldn’t verbalize. You need volunteer hours – as someone who faced hunger due to poverty as a new immigrant, I didn’t have the luxury to go to Africa to volunteer. But I held on to that dream and it’s finally happening!”

She’s starting a Doctor of Public Health program at the Uof T.

“Aavir’s starting kindergarten - we’re both starting school together – Craig says he’ll pack us both a lunch!

“You need a big enough goal, but not so big that you lose your focus. I’ve been given so much, I need to give back. Intentionality to giving is vital.

“There are days when I am exhausted, I feel hopeless about everything that’s going on in the world. Then I get to read an impact report and hope fills my heart. It gives me the courage to go on. There’s a quote from my favourite poet, Rupi Kaur, that I love: The day you have everything, I hope you remember when you had nothing.

“My experiences shaped me.”

• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).