Meet Harpreet
Woman with laptop
Woman with laptop
Woman with laptop

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.