Calgary high school student winner of TD Scholarship for community leadership

A Calgary student is one of 20 graduates-to-be from across the country awarded the TD Scholarship for Community Leadership.

A Calgary high school student has been named one of 20 winners of a national scholarship sponsored by TD that provides up to $70,000 for tuition and living expenses.

Grade 12 student Rachel Simantov, who goes to Dr. E.P. Scarlett High School, was at school when she learned she had won.

“I was in my French class because I was obsessively checking my emails for a whole month,” she said. “And when I found out, I ran outside and I called my parents. It was very exciting.”

Healthcare-related issues

Simantov has focused on a number of global and local healthcare-related issues in her junior and high school years.

For a Grade 9 science fair project, she looked at the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and created a computer simulation to optimize vaccine deployment.

“The biggest problem that we had at the time was how to distribute vaccines equally or equitably right,” she said. “There was a lot of discourse regarding that and there was the problem of like, how do we balance the economy with people’s lives which are invaluable.”

Her strategy earned her accolades at science fairs and an invitation to speak at the Canada Science Policy Conference about using data to guide health policymaking.

“The scholarship is a leadership scholarship,” she said. “So they care a lot about community involvement and they care that you care enough and you show enough initiative that you actually make enough change or that you’re trying to make changes in your community.”

Financial challenge

When Simantov learned that mental health treatments were a financial challenge for some people, she drafted a proposal for cost-effective programs that received attention from Alberta’s Institute of Health Economics as part of future healthcare reform considerations.

“I wrote a paper about equity in health care,” she said. “So that’s kind of when that whole interest became really cemented, just the fact that it’s really important to me to make sure that health care is equitable for everyone regarding rare diseases, regarding different sectors of society.”

The TD Scholarship for Community Leadership got its start in 1995 to recognize students in their final year of high school who have demonstrated an outstanding commitment to community leadership.

Along with tuition and living expenses, the scholarship provides opportunities for paid summer employment, peer networking and mentorship.

“I think that the main thing that the TD scholarship does (is that) it’s a life-changing amount of money right? But that’s not even the biggest thing,” she said. “I think what they do is they give you this community of people who care so deeply.”

Positive change

Simantov met the criteria of helping support positive change in her community along with contributing to making the world a better place. She plans on taking a ‘gap’ year before heading off to the University of Toronto.

“I want to study math,” she said. “I tell a lot of people about what I’ve done and they’re like, oh, you almost want to go into health or social justice but I want to do math, I really, really, really love math.”

Her parents, June and Michael are proud and excited at what the future holds for Rachel.

“I’m sure that her happiness is going to be connected to the fact of being in a position that can actually help community in terms of what she’s doing or social justice or anything else, I’m sure it’s going to be part of her life,” said Michael.

Past winners have come up with projects helping to clean up the environment, promote social justice, or fight child poverty in their community. Learn more about the here.