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Currently residing on the unceded traditional territories of the xÊ·məθkÊ·É™yÌ“É™m (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sÉ™lilwÉ™taɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, Lena Hozaima is a passionate public health advocate and professional clinical nurse with 15-plus years of experience providing acute, community and mental healthcare to marginalized and vulnerable patient groups. Her leadership role as clinical nurse administrator spans across academia, non-profits, health authorities and government agencies, where she dedicates her work to equity-related health policies, community health development and change management initiatives for marginalized and vulnerable population communities.

Lena’s guiding principle is rooted in the belief that all students deserve equal access to pursue their education goals regardless of race, gender, age and ethnicity. Throughout her career, she secured more than $50 million to date in educational access to scholarships, bursaries, and community sustainable development funding opportunities, to support the health and well-being of marginalized students, families and communities and help them thrive successfully and overcome systemic inequities.

In her former leadership role at Quest Outreach Society, she implemented an equity-centred ‘social determinants of health’ organizational system change approach, resulted in delivering access to quality food security needs for over 300,000 marginalized vulnerable individuals and families across Lower Mainland B.C. Her advocacy work inspired many local, national and global social service non-profits to adopt a similar equity-centred system change model approach and further led the Government of Canada Ministry of Agriculture to invest in a national $26-million Food Policy Funding Initiative (2019) to support food equity access for marginalized vulnerable population groups across Canada.

Lena currently serves on several committees, including chair of the People & Culture committee and the EDI committee for the Rural & Remote Division of Family Practice; board director, Public Health Association of BC; and board director, Society of Obstetrics & Gynecology of Canada. She previously served as chair, Quality Assurance Committee, College of Pharmacists of BC and board director, YMCA (Edmonton), leading health equity policy, governance, and organizational strategic initiatives. Lena holds a BSN degree (UBC), MSc in Cardiovascular Health Sciences (UManitoba), and Transformational Executive Leadership Certification, Smith School of Business (Queen’s University).