Meet Harpreet
Based in Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam Indian Band), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Nation), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation), I am a consultant, advocate, and writer.
With an interdisciplinary background in law and sociology and lived experience, I bring a nuanced and justice-driven perspective to complex institutional work. My approach is decolonial, trauma-informed, and grounded in equity principles and human rights.
I am multi-racial, with an immigrant father from India and an Inuk-Polish mother from Labrador. Having spent my early years in Montreal studying in French, then my teenage years in downtown Toronto, my culturally diverse upbringing ignited a lifelong passion for social justice, cross-cultural awareness, and community engagement.
I earned my Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law in 2017. After law school, I articled at Legal Aid Ontario, with rotations in refugee, Aboriginal, and criminal litigation. In 2019, I completed a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in International and Comparative Law at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where I was the recipient of the Dean’s Tuition Fellowship Award, the Public Interest Award, and a post-graduate fellowship at Yale Law School. I was Called to the Bar in Ontario in 2020 and I am a member with the Law Society of British Columbia.
As an Investigator for an independent officer of the BC Legislature, I investigated the deaths and critical injuries of children and young people in government care. From 2021 - 2023, I was appointed as one of the first four Independent Chairpersons and presided over disciplinary hearings in the adult custody division within nine provincial correctional centres in BC.
Currently, I am an Equity Advisor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. In this role, I provide training, education, and consulting on equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) and support with institutional change through a human rights and anti-oppression lens.
I contribute my spare time as an Electoral Observer for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Most recently, in May 2024, I participated in an election observation mission in North Macedonia. I also dedicate my spare time to learning the Spanish language.
Before law school, I completed a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Sociology and a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), majoring in History and Anthropology, at the University of Guelph. My M.A. area of research, over a two-year period, focused on the integration of educated racialized immigrant women in the Canadian labour market. During my undergraduate degree, I was actively involved in my local community as a Youth Support Worker in a youth emergency shelter and a women's group home.