Dina Hamed.

Back in 2021, while completing my Master of Education at Queen's University, I was challenged to complete an exercise called Draw Your Future, developed by Patti Dobrowolski. We were asked to draw what we wanted our future to look like. I filled the page with dreams for my personal life: spending more time with my husband and kids, taking care of my health, renovating our backyard. But when it came to my career, I drew one simple speech bubble, and an accompanying annotation, that said, "Helping people... [which] can look like lots of things." Ironically, after four years of art school, it's this stick figure and speech bubble that I'm proudest of. Looking back, that little drawing captured something I didn't fully understand at the time. It ended up becoming the guiding principle for my career.

Over the next five years, I realized my life's purpose is to be in service of others. The question became: how do I do that while also providing for my family? As it turns out, I'd been inching toward that answer all along. My career has taken me from artist, to pastry chef, to marketer, to educator, and now to leading national Early Talent Programs at Nestlé Canada. On paper those roles couldn't look more different, but they all had one thing in common: they put me in front of people. Whether I was facilitating workshops and training sessions, hosting events and large-scale meetings, leading teams of young chefs, mentoring students and early-career professionals, or teaching in the classroom, I was always helping people grow, connect, and believe in themselves.

Somewhere along the way, I also discovered another gift. It wasn't because someone told me I was a good public speaker. It was because of how people consistently made me feel after we'd worked together. A colleague recently sent me a message that perfectly captured it:

"I have had some very insightful conversations with you and always came out inspired. You bring positivity and authenticity to work... I wish you a lot of success in whatever you do in life."

Messages like that have become a recurring theme throughout my career, and they've given me the confidence to lean into something I've always loved: bringing people together around ideas that matter.

I'm a proud Canadian-Egyptian, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, and a friend. I genuinely believe people are capable of extraordinary things when they feel seen, connected, and inspired. (And yes... like Miss Congeniality, I really do want world peace.) Today, I'm choosing to use my voice in service of organizations whose missions I believe in, helping them create experiences that both inform people and help build believers.

Off the clock, you'll catch me painting