by Allan Gonzales
Ever since her early aspiration of becoming a Pediatric Psychologist at a young age, Esther Kim has carried on the motivation of helping others in need. As a 2017 Future ACES Foundation scholarship recipient, the ambition to help others in her community has never faded away.
“The motivation behind that initial career aspiration is still there. And I still very much am trying to figure out how to meaningfully reach it” she says.
Kim was raised in Langley, BC where she graduated from Walnut Grove Secondary School. She is currently working as a network coordinator for Rural Health Services Research Network of BC (RHSRNbc), a research group at the University of British Columbia, where they focus on rural health services.
“There are actually so many perspectives in the world and so many different ways that people connect and find joy in life. It’s about recognizing the world is bigger than just the world that I’m living by myself.”
When she learned about the different roles in health care, she began to shift her interests in the health care system and wondered how that could lead to building a helpful environment. “Maybe if I work at a higher scale, I can help implement a policy, where it reaches more people.”
Reflecting on the impacts of winning the scholarship, Kim says it, “Contributed to the overall fund of being able to go away from home and to be able to start studying” – Cognitive Science at McGill University Soon after completing her bachelor’s at McGill, she applied to a Master of Public Health at the University of Toronto. During her two-year program at UofT, Kim had the opportunity to learn about the connections between Indigenous culture and health perspectives.
“There are so many gaps in care and so many barriers to care that Indigenous people face systemically and perpetually. Even though we say that colonialism happened a long time ago, like it still has impacts today.”
Although she has enjoyed her experiences and opportunities in post-secondary, she still wants to “fulfill, that initial motivation of reaching people and hearing them and just being helpful in a way”. Her current job is not her final calling in life, and she is open for future opportunities to hear people, see people and care for them, overall helping to build a better community.
If there is one thing Kim would tell her grade twelve self, it would be to try as many things as possible and not over think so much about “the big picture”.
Since graduating high school, she has expanded he work from local communities to making a significant impact within the larger healthcare system in BC, with a particular focus on supporting and celebrating the strengths of many communities who have been historically marginalized. Whether it’s implementing healthcare policies to conducting research aimed at improving wellbeing, her dedication to help those most in need remain a driving force.