meet samanta“The Accidental Entrepreneur” | Founder, Disrupter & Collectivist | (she/her)
Samanta (she/her)
founder OCP INCSamanta is a creative problem solver who actively challenges the status quo. She founded On Canada Project while in her Master’s at Western University. Samanta strives to create critical and compassionate conversations while building and amplifying the community around her.
Samanta founded the On Canada Project, formerly On COVID-19 Project, in April 2020. What was first meant to be a temporary, grassroots, community solution for social good, into a sustainable force for good. This significant career pivot, and giant leap of faith, happened in April 2021 when Krishnapillai formally transitioned the passion project into a social enterprise business.
Krishnapillai’s passion stems from her lived experience as the daughter of Eelam Tamil refugees, Mohan and Rathini, as a first-generation Tamil Canadian and as someone who intentionally took time to focus on her mental well-being in her early 20s, which fundamentally changed her perspective of the world.
Sam pairs her lived experience with her education in health equity, trauma and violence-informed care, diversity and inclusion and system change, and her professional experiences working in advocacy in executive leadership at her student union and community building at nonprofits, to passionately drive change.
Samanta was named one of Best Health Magazines Women of the Year and 2020 Health Hero, Tamil Canadian Centre for Civic Action named her a trailblazer in their 2021 Top 30 under 30 list, she was the recipient of the Canadian Tamil Professional Associations Emerging Professional Award in 2021, most recently named one of the Atelier Collective’s 2021 Rookies of the Year and one of Future of Goods 2022 Founders to Watch.
Sam challenges herself and the people around her to show up fully and unapologetically as their full selves.
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Audre Lorde, Adrienne Maree Brown, Fred Hampton, Maya Angelou, Ancestors & Future Descendants
And knowing that just because I won’t see collective liberation in my lifetime, doesn’t mean I don’t have a duty to fight for it.
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Health Policy, working to create innovative health solutions that are patient-centred and equitable
And I think I’d stumble onto writing as a hobby at some point.
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Aquarius Sun, Pisces Moon, Gemini Rising
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“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” - President Barack Obama
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To this day, The thing I’m most proud of is surviving the deep, dark depths of a mental health crisis in my early/mid-twenties.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever do anything as meaningful as showing up for myself when I was simultaneously giving up on myself.
