Dr. Yasmin Razack

Yasmin joined Canadian Blood Services in 2021 as our first chief diversity officer. She works closely with other senior leaders, employees, and stakeholders to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) with intentionality, across our organization and within the broader health landscape. With her guidance and leadership, we are working to further evolve our practices and policies to strengthen our commitment to DEI and cultivate a donor/registrant base and workforce that more fully reflects and serves Canada’s population.

Yasmin has nearly two decades of progressive experience in senior leadership roles focused on diversity, equity and community inclusion. For seven years, she served as director of global citizenship, education and inclusion at Centennial College in Toronto. In this capacity, she actively engaged students, staff and the wider community in transformative learning and ignited the development of collaborative strategic initiatives to consistently address systemic barriers for equity-deserving groups.

Yasmin holds a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership from the University of Western Ontario and is a certified professional coach. Her professional roles, educational background and scholarly research has given Yasmin an in-depth understanding of how to actively engage diverse communities and shape effective organizational strategies to address systemic biases and inequities.

Additionally, Yasmin has a profound knowledge of effective leadership practices in multi-faceted institutions that includes application of the Ontario Human Rights Code within diverse contexts, a critical understanding of AODA, Indigenization and applying the key tenets of anti-oppressive practice.

She strongly believes in the co-creation of DEI strategies that foster community inclusion and active participation which allows for mistakes, failures and a high level of humility that recognizes this work is constantly evolving.