Ted Rogers School’s Gold Medal recipient recognized for community service, leadership and advocacy
Toronto Metropolitan University’s highest academic honour has been presented to a Ted Rogers MBA graduate who is a leader in emergency management with a dedication to sharing knowledge and helping other students achieve.
Simon Wells received TMU’s Gold Medal award this week at convocation. The Gold Medal is awarded to one student from each faculty in recognition of their academic excellence and outstanding community involvement.
Receiving the Gold Medal is a great honour for Wells. “It means that the school recognizes the value of community engagement and community service, and that it recognizes the value of public service, not just as an occupation, but as calling,” Wells said.
Wells stands out as a committed leader who is passionate about community service. Wells’ achievements extend beyond academic excellence; his extracurriculars include participating in the MBA Student Association.
Wells’ background is in the public sector, non-profit and the military. Currently, he is a program manager on the strategic initiatives team at Toronto Emergency Management, where he leads strategic initiatives and projects that improve public safety. He has experience leading emergency response teams, including managing mass immunization clinics during the pandemic. For the last five years, he’s worked in disaster and emergency management.
Wells founded the Canadian Journal of Emergency Management, an open-access, peer-reviewed, bilingual journal for the disaster and emergency management industry.
“There are a lot of dedicated people in my industry,” Wells says of emergency management. “But, in Canada there is not a lot of knowledge mobilization and exchange between scholars, policymakers and practitioners. And so our mission is to create a forum so that they can share their knowledge, lessons learned, and insights so that emergency management and the safety of the public in Canada can flourish.”
As an MBA student, Wells made a lasting impact on the TMU community and beyond through his community service, exceptional leadership and advocacy.
“I always wanted to do an MBA,” Wells reflects. “Not only is it a mark of excellence, but I thought that it was going to equip me with the skills that I would need to lead organizations at an organizational level and implement big visions and achieve goals. And I certainly feel on the other side of it, that an MBA has equipped me with the tools that I need to start addressing those types of challenges.”
In addition to outstanding academic achievement, Wells served as the Vice President, Student Advocacy and Wellbeing of the MBA Student Association, where he developed a Student Advocacy Resources and Processes Guide to empower students to navigate their academic experience.
Wells explains that he wanted to equip MBA candidates with the information they needed to navigate a big administrative system, to empower them to have the success that they wanted to put the effort into. “I wanted to make clear a chaotic governance system so that we had one less problem to worry about,” he said.
He worked with a number of stakeholders, including the graduate student union, faculty and administration to understand what their responsibilities and roles are in student success.
The Ted Rogers School supported Wells extensively through his MBA career, he explained.
“They support everybody extensively. The administrative team is outstanding. All of the weekly emails that they send out make clear exactly what needs to happen and when throughout your academic journey - they're very responsive to students and their needs. The faculty are the same... We were given the opportunity to succeed and excel if we wanted to excel. And many of us took them up on that opportunity and I'm grateful for them. A lot of late nights for them, for everybody, and a lot of responsiveness and support from faculty and administration.”
Wells’ proudest accomplishment has been helping people in the Ted Rogers School program, in his industry, his journal team, and his work team in ways that other people don't see and are still not recognized, he says.
“I'm very proud of the award and very grateful for it, but I try to make my corner of the world a better place, and that often looks like late night phone calls or emails or that type of thing. Just giving people little nudges in the directions they need to go to get what they want at their work or in their life,” he says.
After the convocation ceremonies yesterday, Wells’ plans for the future include spending more time cooking and running, and keeping his focus on serving the public and his industry as best as he can.