Paola Ardiles
February 4, 2020 — People
Co-Founder, Bridge For Health Coop
Paola Ardiles is a public health champion, educator and social entrepreneur. Her work is rooted in community engaged scholarship, systems thinking and participatory practice. In 2017, Paola received the inaugural Health Promotion Canada’s Mid-career National award and was recognized as one of TD Bank’s 10 most influential Hispanic Canadians. In 2013, Paola founded Bridge for Health, a local and global network focused on citizen and youth engagement to promote health and wellbeing. Bridge for Health became an incubator for social innovation and was established as a co-op association in 2017. As a practitioner scholar, she has published and contributed to work ranging from health equity issues to system approaches towards wellbeing in higher education. In 2012, Paola was awarded Dr. Nancy Hall Public Policy Leadership Award of Distinction, for her local, provincial and national work to advance mental health in Canada.
Paola is the co-designer of the Health Change Lab at Simon Fraser University Surrey in partnership with RADIUS Social Innovation Hub, Beedie School of Business. The Health Change Lab is an experiential program to help students identify community health challenges and co-design innovative and entrepreneurial solutions. It served as a catalyst for the development of the Surrey CityLab, a new community-academic partnership between the City of Surrey, Simon Fraser University and Kwantlen Polytechnic University.