D’Andre Wilson-Ihejirika was born and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. She moved to Canada in 2006 to pursue an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at McGill University. She subsequently completed her master’s at the Centre for Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto.
Upon graduation, she took a job in Fort McMurray, Alberta working in the Oil Sands. She had roles in project portfolio management, project development and process improvement.
In 2019, she left Alberta to pivot her career into education and worked in the VPRI office at York University before taking a role as the Director of Programming and Employment Partnerships at Elevate, focused on connecting underrepresented groups to careers in technology and innovation through micro-courses.
D’Andre is now pursuing her PhD in Engineering Education at the University of Toronto, focused on using data analytics to map the various career pathways for engineering graduates. In addition to her research, D’Andre is also the founder of volunteer-run nonprofit, BrainSTEM Alliance, as well as co-founder of Bahamas Engineering and Technology Advancement. D’Andre is married to a mechanical engineer and together they have 3 children.
Read more about D’Andre and her background how she connected with engineering.
The IBET Momentum Fellowships are a central pillar of the new IBET PhD Project, which aims to change the academic landscape within the next five to 10 years by increasing the number of Indigenous and Black engineering professors teaching and researching in Canadian universities. The project will also bring more diverse perspectives and voices into engineering research and the Canadian technology industries.