An UdeM alumna named one of “Canada’s most powerful women”

On October 25, the Diversity Council of the Women’s Executive Network, or WXN, announced its Top 100 Award winners and Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, a UofM graduate in family medicine, is one of them. She is also one of five recipients of WXN’s special award for community leadership, the RBC Future Launch Future Leaders Award.

Pétrin-Desrosiers is already well-known for advancing environmental issues in the field of medicine. She began advocating early in her university studies, serving two mandates as president of the Quebec chapter of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Association (IFMSA), where she worked to raise awareness among medical students on social, cultural and global health issues. She then went on to organize a health and climate change “summer school” and to participate in discussions on the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2018, she collaborated with Tourisme Montréal to welcome more than a thousand medical students to a carbon-neutral meeting of the IFMSA. Today, she is president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment, using her wealth of experience to mobilize doctors and the public around issues related to the environment and health. For example, in May 2021, she gave a TED^x talk on the links between climate change and human health (in French).

With a masters in the environment and sustainable development through UdeM’s Clinical Scholar Program, Pétrin-Desrosiers is one of the first women in Quebec to take up the environmental cause in medicine. Now a leader in the field, she has garnered numerous awards and distinctions, including the Lieutenant Governor’s Youth Medal in 2011, Quebec’s Exceptional Citizen Participation Award in 2013, the Judy Wasserheit Young Leader Award in 2017 and the Dr. Brian Brodie Medical Learner Leadership Award in 2020.

Pétrin-Desrosiers is also one of five recipients of the RBC Future Launch Future Leaders Award, which recognizes young Canadian women who are transforming their communities through innovation, advocacy influence and impact, and community service. She will therefore be invited to attend WXN’s virtual Top 100 Leadership Summit on November 24 to 25, where TOP 100 Award Winners will take part in panel discussions and round tables with leaders in a diverse range of fields. The award itself will be presented at WXN’s Awards Gala on the evening of November 25.