2026 Minerva Canada Rising Star Award
Minerva Canada is launching this award in November as part of the 2026 Canada Safest Employers Awards (CSEA) conducted by Key Media. The award is open to all post-secondary academic institutions, diverse organizations and individual parties. Academic institutions and organizations are asked to promote the Rising Star award among professors/educators, students, supervisors and/or employees.
This award recognizes leaders of the future who demonstrate a commitment to the integration of health and safety. Eligible nominees include full time post-secondary students from Canadian universities or colleges in undergraduate, graduate, or coop programs. Employees with 2 or less years of work experience since graduation from a post-secondary school are also eligible. A team nomination and/or a self-nomination is permitted.
Nominees must demonstrate a leadership ability to initiate and implement change in an academic or workplace environment related to health and/or safety, show dedication to the field through continuing education, special academic or work projects, career progression, generating student or worker safety awareness, mentoring and coaching and be able to demonstrate experience in the execution of safety initiatives while in school or work during the last 12 to 18 months.
The online form must be submitted to Key Media by March 6, 2026. The winner will be announced at the Fall 2026 CSEA dinner.
2025 Minerva Rising Star Awards
We congratulate Adam Calderhead, a safety coordinator with Vets Sheet Metal Ltd., for receiving the Minerva Canada Rising Star Award at the Canada Safest Employers Awards dinner on October 9th in Toronto. We also congratulate the other eight Excellence Awardees who competed as finalists for our Award. More information about the 2025 awards can be found here.
2024 Minerva Rising Star Awards
The 2024 Minerva Rising Star award was presented during the 13th annual Canada’s Safest Employers Awards held on October 10th at the Liberty Grand Hotel in Toronto.
Aliakbar Eslamibaladeh , a recent PhD graduate and researcher at the Toronto Metropolitan University’s Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science was announced winner of the 2024 Minerva Rising Star Award. He was one of 10 finalists for this award. His passion in Safety Engineering fueled his desire to pursue advanced studies focused on mastering dedicated safety design procedures and critical safety systems. His winning submission described one of his projects for a company within the energy sector.
Minerva Canada is planning to have some of the award finalists in a panel discussion at its December 4th free webinar. Details and registration for this free webinar can be seen here.
2023 Minerva Rising Star Award
The 2023 Minerva Rising Star award was presented during the 12th annual Canada’s Safest Employers Awards. held on October 19th at the Liberty Grand Hotel in Toronto. Alyssa Grocutt, a PhD candidate at the Queen’s University Smith School of Business, was announced winner of the 2023 Minerva Rising Star Award.
As one of 10 finalists for this award, Alyssa was interviewed by the COS magazine for her work researching the consequences of work injuries and workplace fatalities on secondary victims. See the article here.
Here’s another article from Jennifer Spies, one of the other finalists.
Minerva Canada is planning to have some of the award finalists in a panel discussion at its next webinar. Webinar details and invitations will be sent out shortly.
2022 Minerva Rising Star Award
Minerva Canada launched its new Rising Star award in 2022 as part of Canada’s Safest Employers Awards competition and overseen by Key Media.
The award announcements were held virtually on October 20, 2022. Minerva Canada congratulates Caroline Steinborn as its first Rising Star Award winner.
She is a recent new employee with Canada Post and received her Bachelor of Kinesiology from the University of Calgary and her Masters degree in Public Health from the University of Alberta. Her winning submission focused on a musculoskeletal prevention and awareness program she created that produced a significant reduction in injuries.
The introduction to this award by Peter Sturm from Minerva’s Board is found here. Before the award ceremonies, Peter also moderated a panel discussion with some of the award finalists, see here for the discussions.
