Chantal Joy

Chantal aspires to enable others to be their whole selves and revel in their own unique journey.

Chantal’s own journey through childhood trauma, gender-based violence, addiction, and loss have shaped her life’s pursuits and her practice as a Student Affairs professional of 25+ in the post-secondary sector in Canada. With an awareness of her own social location and privileges, she works to nurture learning and personal empowerment in those she has the honor to accompany on their journey, in, out, through and beyond an educational system that is disproportionately less-than-hospitable to some for whom systemic forms of oppression impact equal access to educational success.

Having overcome barriers of her own as a first-generation student, Chantal persisted to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s Studies and Sociology and a Masters in College Student Personnel. Since an early age she has sought out divergent, transformative experiences that over her 50 years of living have included solo travel, working in unique jobs like being a live-in staff in a Men’s Fraternity, activism in anti-corporate development and in the sizeist movement, pushing her own learning boundaries from anti-oppression training to auto mechanics, and defying convention as a 330lb half-marathon walker.

Orphaned at age 12 and blessed to land in the arms of a loving extended family who created the conditions for her to bloom and truly discover her path, Chantal has a deep understanding of loss but also an instinct for navigating her way to healing and wholeness. She shares her story of loss, healing and resilience, of aging and non-conforming, or overcoming difficulty and obstacles, as a way of reminding women that they are not alone, that they are powerful, that they too can overcome, and that together we rise. Together, we bloom.