IDEA-STEM, Redefining Who Belongs in Science

"Access is collective, care is non-coercive, and inclusion should never require assimilation."

In 2014, a geneticist and a marine biologist started a research project together. The subject was the experience of graduate students with disabilities in STEM. Both researchers were scientists themselves. Both were people with disabilities. What they found in their data was something they had already been living for years.

The systems that train scientists, fund research, and employ healthcare professionals were not built for people like them. They were barely willing to let them through the door.

Six years later, that research project became IDEA-STEM.

Who they are

IDEA-STEM is a disability led organization working at the intersection of STEM, healthcare, accessibility, and anti-ableism. The team is made up of researchers, educators, and inclusion professionals who advise, train, and consult with organizations that want to move beyond compliance and into real, lived inclusion.

They work with universities, hospitals, research bodies, and employers. They teach, they coach, they do applied research. They bring evidence and they bring lived experience, and they refuse to separate the two.

At the center of it all is a simple idea. Meaningful inclusion is not a policy. It is a practice. And it has to be built, not declared.

The origin story

The idea took root long before it had a name.

In 2014, Dr. Mahadeo Sukhai and Ainsley Latour collaborated on a national research project exploring the experiences of graduate students with disabilities in STEM. Mahadeo is the world's first congenitally blind geneticist. Ainsley is a hard of hearing, neurodivergent scientist and licensed cytogenetic and molecular genetic technologist. Both had built careers in science against a system that was not designed to accommodate them.

They were not surprised by what the research showed. They had lived it.

Originally, the concept they had in mind was a centre of learning that would teach science inclusively. A place where students with disabilities would not have to fight for accommodations that should have been built into the curriculum from the start.

Then the pandemic happened.

The turning point

COVID-19 did not create the inequities in healthcare and education. It made them impossible to ignore.

For disabled communities, the pandemic exposed every fault line that had always been there. Access to testing. Access to vaccines. Access to education that had suddenly moved online. Access to healthcare that had suddenly become even harder to navigate.

Mahadeo and Ainsley looked at what they were seeing and decided the centre of learning they had envisioned was not enough. The problem was bigger. The response had to be bigger.

In 2020, they founded IDEA-STEM as a consulting and higher education firm. Years of research, collaboration, and lived experience became the foundation of a movement.

Building the work

IDEA-STEM is not one thing. It is consultation. It is training. It is speaking. It is research. It is all of these, held together by a single belief.

Access is collective. Care is non-coercive. Inclusion should never require assimilation.

The organization works with clients across sectors. They help organizations embed accessibility and anti-ableism into how they operate, hire, teach, and deliver care. They train leaders to understand that representation is a starting point, not a destination. They coach teams through the harder work of actually changing how they function.

Their recent launch, Foundations of Inclusive STEM Teams, is an example. A live, interactive webinar that introduces the Hibiscus vs. Dandelion model for understanding team culture. The question underneath the work is always the same. What does inclusion look like when it is lived, not just stated?

The team

Mahadeo Sukhai serves as Chief Operating Officer. With over 25 years as a scientist and educator in the medical sciences, he is a national leader in inclusive employment, chairing the Employment Technical Committee at Accessibility Standards Canada and co-chairing the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's committee on accessibility and systemic ableism. He teaches at Queen's University, Ontario Tech, and OCAD University, and sits on multiple boards advancing disability and data equity.

Ainsley Latour serves as Chief Executive Officer. She holds two undergraduate degrees, two graduate diplomas, and a master's in marine environmental genetics. She has presented her research on disability in STEM at national and international forums, and served on the Government of Ontario's AODA Post-Secondary Education Standards Development Committee, helping shape future accessibility policy for post-secondary institutions.

April Assenza serves as Director of Strategic Development. A mental health consultant with over 15 years across the health and non-profit sectors, April brings lived experience and systems expertise to IDEA-STEM's work on trauma informed environments. She has led the development of national programs, redesigned high impact signature events with accessibility at the forefront, and built strategic collaborations that embed well-being and equity into organizational culture.

Together, they bring something most consulting firms cannot. A team that has lived what they teach.

Real world impact

The impact of IDEA-STEM is measured in something quieter than metrics.

It is measured in the graduate student who stops hiding their disability in their research lab because the culture has changed. It is measured in the hospital that rebuilds its hiring process so disabled clinicians can actually get through it. It is measured in the educator who stops asking disabled students to advocate for themselves and starts building curriculum that does not require them to.

Inclusion is collective work. IDEA-STEM's role is to make that collective work possible.

What is next

IDEA-STEM is expanding. The Learning and Development line is growing with new offerings like Foundations of Inclusive STEM Teams. The organization is deepening its research partnerships and its reach into healthcare, education, and employment.

But the core of the work does not change. What changes is the scale.

"We strive to redefine what belonging, participation, and excellence can look like together."

The takeaway

IDEA-STEM is not asking organizations to do more. It is asking them to do differently.

Representation is not inclusion. Accommodation is not access. Inviting disabled people into rooms that were not built for them is not the same as building rooms where they belong from the start.

The work Mahadeo, Ainsley, and April are doing is the work of rebuilding those rooms. Room by room. System by system.