The EthnoMed Podcast

Provider Pulse Ep. 21: Mentorship as Legacy: Dr. Bukola Salami

• Dr. Duncan Reid, MD @ EthnoMed.org • Season 1 • Episode 21

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From a teenager navigating a new life in Toronto to becoming Canada’s first African woman to hold a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in the health sciences, Dr. Bukola Salami’s story is one of resilience, representation, and the transformative power of mentorship.


In this episode, Dr. Salami joins host Dr. Duncan Reid to discuss her migration from Nigeria, how a high-school mentorship program changed her life, and the responsibility of mentoring the next generation.


Her reflections on belonging, community, and long-term vision offer essential lessons for aspiring healthcare professionals and educators alike.

Visit EthnoMed.org for additional resources. Follow us on YouTube and Instagram @EthnoMedUW

Dr. Salami 25_06_28

[00:00:00] 

Dr. Salami: I had a mom with five kids. And, we are living in a low income neighborhood. In a two bedroom, all six of us, all the girls were squeezed together in one room. And money was challenging. My mom was working as a cleaner. She had two jobs. 

The whole deal is peace of heart and knowing that I've contributed meaningfully to society because what will live on is people that I have grown and people that have contributed to and the impact that I have made. 

Duncan: You are listening to the Provider Pulse [00:00:30] series from the EthnoMed Podcast where we continue to explore the human stories behind healthcare professionals.

My name is Dr. Duncan Reid, a primary care physician in Harborview's International Medicine Clinic, and Medical Director of EthnoMed. Today's guest is Dr. Bukola Salami, a professor at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Salami: My name is, professor Bukola Salami. I am, professor at the Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. I am also Tier [00:01:00] One Canada Research Chair in black and racialized people's health.

I have been involved in, funding of, around, 250 million. I lead projects on several diverse topics related to Black, African, people. And I also, founded the African Child and Youth Migration Network, which, is, a network focused on addressing the needs of, African children and youths across the globe.

 At the Society of Refugee Healthcare Providers Health Conference in Halifax, Nova [00:01:30] Scotia, Dr. Salami shared how our journey from Nigeria to Canada shaped a lifelong mission to make mentorship and representation a pathway for others

Section 1: Migration and Mentorship Origins

Duncan: Would you mind just telling us where did you come from

Dr. Salami: Okay. Maybe I'll tell you about how I got here.

So my parents the first time they came here was in the seventies and they were students So they gave birth to my two older sisters here. And then they went back to Nigeria where I was born then they decided to bring me.

So, I migrated to Canada when I was 16 in [00:02:00] 1997. I had a mom with five kids. And, we are living in a low income neighborhood. we were living in a two bedroom, all six of us.

So, all the girls were squeezed together in one room. And money was challenging. My mom was working as a cleaner. She had two jobs. So my mom would work one job.

And then go to work in the other job .

And it was challenging with kids. I mean, there were a few times when she would almost have an accident because she dozed off while driving. So at some point she [00:02:30] had to stop. Which then of course also created financial difficulties.

 I mean, there was one or two times that, she told us that she might have gone to a food bank and see in terms of what food they have there. But African parents tend to want to cover everything, make everything look rosy, the kids, don't even notice anything happening.

It's now that she's able to tell me what happened in the past that I didn't even know. All I know is, you know, so far there's food in the house and things, so mom was not always at home because mom had to work and [00:03:00] mom had to take care, and provide for the family. So those were some of the challenges.

But I think I was also lucky that, we had a church that we were going to, I think it's the oldest Nigerian church in Canada in Toronto. So through that church also found community. So that was really our community. I think that's oftentimes one of the roles of religious institutions. Many people that go to religious institutions, it's also about that community and belonging. So, I continue to speak my language, I do my [00:03:30] dances, I get some information related to my cultural heritage.

And all this was very, very positive in terms of, my growth. So I did suffer the influences of income inequality. My community belonging was a buffer.

Duncan: Dr. Salami discusses her interest in medicine, but also the cautionary experiences of her parents who were unable to find employment even after completing advanced degrees.

Dr. Salami: My parents were educated in Canada, and had gone back to Nigeria in the seventies. And when they came back here, [00:04:00] they didn't have Canadian experience, so because of that, they could not work in their profession. So my mom was working as a cleaner, and my dad was working as a cab driver.

Duncan: What were they trained as? 

Dr. Salami: So my mom has a degree in political science from the University of Winnipeg.

My dad has a undergraduate degree from McMaster University and a master's degree in management studies from, Farleigh Dickinson University in the U.S.

Duncan: Wow. So super educated and then they

Dr. Salami: educated. So when I saw that, all that I thought about is [00:04:30] you get education. You are still not gonna, be able to achieve what you need to, achieve.

Section 2: Guidance Counselor

Duncan: Dr. Salami remembers a guidance counselor who made a particular impact in her life by introducing her to a mentorship program while in high school, which made a career in medicine appear possible.

Dr. Salami: I was lucky in terms of my guidance counselor, a Francophone Canadian, beautiful Ms.

Levoix, Colette Levoix. And, she was beautiful and she took a family approach to our counseling, right? To say, what support does the family [00:05:00] need? 

She referred me to the mentorship program for my sister where she can take a course at university level while she was still in high school. So she really, really helped. So she introduced me to this mentorship program at the University of Toronto. At that time, it was still in the third or fourth year running. I was lucky my first time ever doing a panel interview and I was accepted into the mentorship program. Totally changed things for me.

So the mentorship program changed my perspective to see there are people out there actually that [00:05:30] got education and they're doing well, right? Maybe there's not a lot of them, but it changed my perspective and it let me start seeing that the vision can be different from, what path my parents had.

 So that motivated me.

Duncan: Dr. Salami had long been drawn to medicine, but she ultimately chose a path in nursing instead of as a physician. Balancing ambition with pragmatism.

 Section 3 -- Choosing Nursing and the Long-Term Vision

Dr. Salami: And when I migrated to Canada, of course, one of the most respected professions in the world is medicine. So I've [00:06:00] always thought about becoming a physician.

So when I first started, my thinking about success is I had to be a physician. I thank God I, chose, nursing and I became successful in nursing and it still brought me back to being a professor of medicine.

Duncan: So you were thinking medicine for a long time

Dr. Salami: I was thinking medicine for a long time from back in Nigeria, from when I was small. And then, when I got to Canada, I attended that mentorship program, which was for people in the health sciences. So part of the mentorship program was [00:06:30] shadowing people.

I shadowed obstetrician, pediatrician, family doctors. I would shadow different people. And I was lucky to shadow this one nurse as part of the mentorship program, a nurse practitioner. So then that made me consider nursing. And then when I was applying to school, I had applied to do my bachelor's degree in, neuroscience 

And that was all I applied for. After getting admission. I called one university and I said, can I change to nursing? Because I thought, if medical school doesn't work, you still have [00:07:00] profession where I may be able to be comfortable. So I thought I would do nursing and then go to medical school, and then once I did nursing and then I got my master's, it's like, I think I like it here and I'm not shifting.

Duncan: So you're already thinking way ahead it sounds like you were thinking something practical.

Dr. Salami: Yes.

Duncan: you're saying what is gonna be a good fallback

Dr. Salami: Oh, yes.

Duncan: guaranteed to get some sort of job, job,

Dr. Salami: job in.

Duncan: And then this incredible mentorship program, which was what year of high school was that?

Dr. Salami: I was in grade 11.

Duncan: Grade [00:07:30] 11. Yeah. And you were already a good student though,

Dr. Salami: Yes, I was. Uh, yes,

Duncan: And even back home, were you a good student?

Dr. Salami: Back home, I think, I used to have a class of 80, I used to be maybe 20th, out of the class. So better than average, but I wasn't, often the top 

Duncan: And did that change when you came to Canada? 

Dr. Salami: Yes! back home. It's more difficult back home. Because back in Africa, the education there, it's more memorization.

And Canada is more understanding. So, you know, I remember there was a time, we had to [00:08:00] memorize this one page, something about physics. But in Canada, I just have to understand it and spell it out. You know, I was more of an understanding person rather than a memorize person.

 

Dr. Salami discusses her path from nursing to pursuing research and ultimately a PhD.

Duncan: Dr. Salami discusses her path from nursing to pursuing research and ultimately a PhD.

Section 4--From Experience to Research

Duncan: What about this nursing? So when I think about nursing, I don't necessarily think about research. Were you jumping into research immediately after you received your nursing [00:08:30] degree?

Dr. Salami: No. I went into nursing and, I started seeing some of my, professors by going for their PhD. So I started asking them, you know, what is this phD thing about. So it was then that I started actually having this whole idea about getting a PhD.

So in my last year of, nursing, we had a course called Current Issues in Nursing. I chose to do something about diversity. And based on my parents' , I was motivated to do something on internationally educated nurses. So that sort of [00:09:00] started me on this part . My first publication that I have ever written was a paper that I wrote during my master's on internationally educated nurses, an extension of that work. And then during my PhD, I shifted it to more of focusing on Phillipine educated nurses.

And then, I moved to Ontario, focused on temporary foreign workers, and undocumented migrants. When I moved, to Alberta , I was also volunteering in the African community and in the black community, based on what I was seeing in the community, then I started doing work [00:09:30] on Africans and black people.

Then from that I became Canada researcher in black and racialized, people's health.

Years later, that mentorship seed had grown into a career spanning four universities and national leadership.

Dr. Salami completed her bachelor's degree at the University of Windsor, her master's and PhD at the University of Toronto, and was a professor at the University of Alberta before moving to the University of Calgary.  I'm also the vice president of the Canadian Nurses [00:10:00] Association. And I sit on multiple boards. I co-chair, the Public Health Agency of Canada, I dip my hands into multiple things 

Duncan: And how did your own migration history or your identity influence what you were researching.

Dr. Salami: I think everything that I do, it's all about either me trying to course correct the wrongs of the past, and how to actually address some of the things now. For example, I've done work on youth mental health and I myself struggled as a youth with my mental health.

In the last year of high school, [00:10:30] I didn't do too well. But I mean, if there's any youth that is listening to this, you know, one thing that you should know is we fall down, but we get up again. And sometimes you just have to change context. And for me it was just a changing environment that was my cure

So all the research that I have been doing is based on my lived experience. So I told you I chose internationally educated nurses even though my parents were not internationally educated.

But that experience of downward mobility that my parents and I have is one of the [00:11:00] things that motivated me. And now I'm doing some work, for example, on mental health of black children. I have children myself, right? And sometimes I'm like, Hmm, you know, my daughter once came home and said something about issues of racism in the school system. And I'm like, how do I fix this issue about race socialization? I'm gonna do research on it, to help. So my personality really, really influences what I do and, my take on what I do.

And I think it also motivates me towards a commitment to ensure that the [00:11:30] research I do is useful for the community that I serve. So, I want to ensure that the research is practical and useful. So, integrating theory integrating methods, but also translating that into policy and practice.

Duncan: That's incredible. So you're really saying that without your own personal history. You probably wouldn't be studying these things and you probably wouldn't be studying them in the same way.

Dr. Salami: Oh, I think if I'm not a black female, probably not be studying this. Maybe I have this passion. It also changes in terms of [00:12:00] your perspective. So for example, when you're interviewing someone and they're telling you about ancestors or people from back home, like I understand what they're saying. I don't have to ask too much question. It's like I get it. So my experience does shape the kind of data I collect and also sometimes how I interpret that data based on my past experiences.

Duncan: Well, I think that's such a powerful message just to have representation, in healthcare, because those perspectives are, I think, likely only to come to people with a lived experience.[00:12:30] 

Dr. Salami: Yes. 

So the diversity, is important. I remember, during the days of COVID-19, we had challenges in Canada with COVID-19 vaccine uptake among black communities. And they are the same challenge with high mortality rate in the U.S. and also in the UK with high mortality rate among black people.

And, you know, one of the things that we did. Was we realized that, people don't trust the system, right? Because of, what has happened historically and sometimes also what happened pre-migration. So how do you actually make people trust the [00:13:00] system? one of the things that we did is we organized the town hall, organized by black people.

For black people to say, I got the vaccine too. You go get yours. Right. Like, I didn't die, I don't have antichrist on me, you go get yours. So sometimes vaccine uptake and health promotion approaches can be improved when people have people that look like them, people that they trust, and sometimes, what they would reveal their comfort, will be much better when it's representative.

Her scholarship became a mirror of her life. Each [00:13:30] study a response to a story she had lived through or witnessed. Her work on mental health in black youth and COVID-19 equity carried that same conviction. Research should repair what has been damaged in society.

 

Section 5 -- The Circle of Mentorship

Duncan: You're so involved in mentorship young people, can you tell me what motivates you or what you're seeking or what you get back? What is that whole deal with mentorship?

Dr. Salami: Okay. The whole deal. The whole deal is peace of heart and knowing that I've contributed meaningfully to society because I think when, I'm [00:14:00] gone from this planet, what will live on is people that I have grown and people that have contributed to and the impact that I have made. So I told you that, people did mentor me when I was a student.

There were people that sacrificed and said, come and I'll mentor you. And I look back and I'm like, people did this for me. They volunteered time. , Pass the baton to others. So I would be also telling whoever is listening to this that, you know, if people have supported you in the past, continue the cycle.

Mentor someone, support [00:14:30] someone. And I've learned so many things from mentorship, from mentoring. And now I think I've mentored, around 250 high school youths , around 50 undergrads and many more higher up some of the things that I have learned in terms of mentoring high school is the importance of a positive cultural identity.

Because oftentimes what people see is negativity. All the negative things associated with your particular culture. So when we pair people and we are able to say, you know, that is a black physician, that is a [00:15:00] professor of medicine, then they're able to see, oh, you know, and when they learn about their history, then they're able to see, wow, there is a lot to celebrate here and there's a lot of positivity that can come from my people and can also come from me. The other thing we learned is positive influences and community belonging. That youth, when they're in a community where they feel supported, then they start actually feeling a sense of belonging within that community.

 for Dr. Salami, mentorship is [00:15:30] not transactional. It's transformational. A cycle of gratitude and growth that links generations.

Duncan: What advice do you have for young people who are still in school and are looking forward to having careers? 

Dr. Salami: One of the things is having the vision, and sometimes it's difficult to have when all you're surrounded with is not so positive experience.

 The other thing is focusing on long-term goal. So I am the kind of person that I'm not focusing on, what I'm gonna gain tomorrow. I'm focusing on, how is this gonna look in five years, 10 years, 20 years [00:16:00] time, right? So strategic positioning towards that long-term goal. So if you're focusing on your long-term goal, you'll know that no, maybe you, you do a pay cut for a period of time to get a pay raise in the long term. While I focus on my long term goal, I also look at, the broader perspective. So there's not only one way to achieve success, there are multiple ways to achieve success.

 The other thing is, always, have, backup plans, right? So it's possible that one plan doesn't work but don't be too fast to [00:16:30] default on your backup, So, you know, maybe medical school doesn't work. You know what will happen, but do not at the same time, be too fast to default on your backup. And, also know that, there are positive things people have achieved that look like you and are from your culture and that you can achieve it if you set your mind on it. And take care of your mental health.

Surround yourself with positive people, people that believe in you.

 I mean there's so many strategies that I have used throughout my career. What [00:17:00] are the strategies related to even your grades, for example? 

So I find that sleep was very, very important. And I think for a lot of youth, there are many people that, you know, they just study, study, study.

And what I learned is it's not about studying hard. It's about studying smart, right, and being strategic in terms of how you study what is the best time. So yes, you can still have a nine hours of sleep and do better than when you have a three hours of sleep and you study, study, study and do worse.

Duncan: what advice do you have [00:17:30] for young people that don't have a mentor? How do they go about finding one?

Dr. Salami: Yes. So what I have found is oftentimes people are actually willing to mentor you if you ask to be mentored. And honestly, there are times when you send an email and maybe someone is not willing to. If that happens, just know that this is one of many and there are so many paths that you can take.

 So I would say just ask, you know, ask people, especially people that you know may have a heart [00:18:00] for equity. So I would say just ask, you know, and honestly, you can have as much mentors as possible.

You know, it doesn't have to be one. In fact, I often say try at least have two mentors. I tell my assistant professors that I'm mentoring, I tell them, have two mentors. One that is within your culture and one that is outside of your culture.

And the reason of that is the one within your culture will keep you grounded. Now you can talk racism. They understand you can, you know, start a [00:18:30] sentence about your culture and not finish it, and they can complete it for you in their mind. But also

 I find that mentors outside of your culture is also very good to have. And the reason for that is if I did not have mentors outside of my culture, I couldn't have shattered the glass ceiling. I am the first African woman in Canada to be a senior Canada researcher in the health sciences.

 I'm one of a limited few and there's very limited number of us that are full professor in the faculty of medicine and a African and [00:19:00] black. I have a feeling that there are probably no more than five or six in the whole of Canada. So if I was only relying on people on my culture for mentorship, at some point I would not have been able to.

So right now, I have mentors within my culture and I for example, I send them a text and I say, you know, what do you think about this?

But then I also have mentors that are outside of my community. I can say my PhD supervisor, for example, she was, deputy provost at the University of [00:19:30] Toronto , And, um, I would email her anytime that I have to make any strategic move and she's always the one that will tell me, strategy, strategy, strategy, but she's always good at also telling me anytime I think things are gloomy.

And she'll say, well, you have good problems. And she's always helping me to look at this is the positive side of this good problem that you have, that you think it's actually a problem. So, I have found that having both people within my culture keeps me grounded and people outside of my [00:20:00] culture help me shatter the glass ceiling.

Duncan: Any other advice or messages to young people now

Dr. Salami: One of the things is to say thank you. The importance of saying thank you. And in my culture thank you is so important because thank you can open doors to something else. You just go to someone at the end of the year in Christmas and say, Merry Christmas and thank you for all you did for me.

And it could spill over or it could just be that, but at least you know that spirit of appreciation of your mentors and people that have supported you is so important. [00:20:30] 

Duncan: Thank you so much, Dr. Salami. I think. So many useful insights, and what I admire most is just how much mentorship you've been doing and how much you've been giving back

Dr. Salami: That's important because there's not too many of us. So the only way that we can actually, ensure that, we are able to actually achieve equity is by a few of us that have been able to get there, actually step up to address inequities.

Duncan: Thank you so much for your time. 

Dr. Salami: Thank you.

Duncan: From a teenager in Toronto to a [00:21:00] national research leader, Dr. Bukola Salami reminds us that mentorship isn't a favor, it's a legacy. Her story shows what can happen when a community lifts as it climbs.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Provider Pulse series on the EthnoMed podcast.

For those of you preparing for a career in healthcare remember that mentorship can help open doors. And you can start by reaching out to potential mentors. . If you enjoyed this conversation, please share it with a colleague or friend. Be sure to visit our [00:21:30] website@ethnomed.org for additional resources. Thank you and see you at our next episode.