backpack 2 Briefcase - "So you’re getting a degree in religion – what’s next?"

Join us on February 11 and meet DSR alumni who turned their studies in religion into diverse careers!

Register to attend 

This moderated panel of professionals will tell us how they transitioned from U of T student to career professionals, how their degree helped shape and inform their career choices, and provide advice to students on lessons they've learned since graduation. The panel discussion will be followed by a reception and chance to meet and mingle with the panelists. 

Panel Guests

Simon Chambers

Simon is the head of communications with the Action by Churches Together (ACT) Alliance, a global network of Christian organizations engaged in humanitarian response, sustainable development, and global advocacy work.  His career has taken him through youth ministry in the Toronto area, into consulting with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto and then into youth animation in the Anglican refugee and humanitarian organization, ultimately shifting into humanitarian communications within that group.  for over 15 years now.  His work has taken him from refugee camps and subsistence farming villages to the United Nations and all points in between, including COP and the Commission on the Status of Women. Simon has covered humanitarian responses ranging from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to the war in Ukraine, and from work with DRC refugees in Uganda to the October 2025 Hurricane Melissa response in Cuba.

Ruth Richardson

Ruth is the inaugural Executive Director of the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA), an initiative designed to contribute to the emerging field of systemic risk analysis and response with a focus on helping decision-makers better understand, assess, and incorporate sensitivity to systemic risks. Previously, she was the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a unique collaboration of over 25 foundations committed to food systems transformation. She has served on the Advisory Board of the UN Committee on World Food Security as well as on the Steering Committee of TEEBAgriFood led by UN Environment. In a professional life devoted to social change and planetary health, Ruth was first Director of the Unilever Canada Foundation, the founding Chair of the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers’ Network, the first Environment Director at the Metcalf Foundation, and a lead consultant to establish The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. She was the recipient of the 2021 University College Alumni of Influence award.  

Julian Weinrib

Julian is the Associate Director, Student Information Systems at the University of Toronto, where he supports a team of developers, analysts, system administrators, client engagement specialists, project managers and business architects responsible for roughly 25 student and administrative systems, including the University's enterprise student information system (ROSI) and portal (ACORN).   After his undergraduate studies, he completed an MA In Higher Education at Boston College and a PhD in Higher Education Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on the international political economy of higher education and the academic profession. He has worked at the Ontario Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities and the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario in policy-related roles, and progressing to roles in the Dean's Office of the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education at U of T. His work at U of T has focused on leading, enabling and supporting institutional academic and student experience initiatives including technology management and implementation, curricular and pedagogical innovations, and academic analytics.

Panel Moderator

Professor Srilata Raman

Professor Srilata Raman is chair of the DSR's Alumni Relations Committee and has served as the department's associate chair, undergraduate. A professor of Hinduism, she works on medieval South Asian/South Indian religion, devotionalism (bhakti), historiography, hagiography, colonial sainthood, subaltern religion, famine studies and modern Tamil literature. She is the author of Self-Surrender (Prapatti) to God in Śrīvaiṣṇavism: Tamil Cats and Sanskrit Monkeys (Routledge, 2007) and The Transformation of Tamil Religion: Ramalinga Swamigal and Modern Dravidian Sainthood (Routledge, 2022), as well as having published numerous articles and chapters, and co-authored edited volumes.