Paola Ardiles

Senior Lecturer, Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University
Paola Ardiles Gamboa (she/hers) is a Latinx practitioner scholar working on unceded Coast Salish territories. She has been recognized for her innovative, collaborative and inter-sectoral approaches to promote community health and collective wellbeing.

Paola founded Bridge for Health in 2013, as a local & global network focused on citizen & youth engagement to promote health & wellbeing. Bridge for Health was established as a co-op association, receiving the 2017 SFU Coast Capital Savings Venture Award for Social Impact for its efforts to advance wellbeing in the workplace. The co-op now focuses on building equity-centered practices in workplace health, engaging youth in policy-making, and using arts-based approaches as a decolonizing practice.

Paola has collaborated and led various knowledge mobilization and community-based research initiatives related to education, public health policy and social innovation. Currently, she co-leads an arts-based research project Art on the Go to promote newcomer youth engagement in policy making related to improving road safety in Surrey. She is also co-leading a community-based study understanding experiences of exclusion of foreign trained health professionals.

Since 2015, Paola has been at Simon Fraser University developing participatory and community-based experiential courses including the co-design of Health Change Lab, in collaboration with SFU RADIUS and the Beedie School of Business, City of Surrey, Fraser Health and many community based organizations. As the Faculty Teaching Fellow, she supported capacity building initiatives related to community-engaged and anti-racist education. Paola is an Associate with the SFU's Wosk Centre for Dialogue and recently Co-chaired Participedia’s Teaching Training & Mentoring Committee, a global network focused on public participation & democratic innovations.

Bilingual: Spanish/English, advanced French