About Lechin
Lechin, a former part-time MBA student at the Rotman School of Management, is looking at new ways to improve healthcare and social services by integrating community development and design thinking. Lechin is a community development specialist who is passionate about innovative solutions to empower women and other marginalized groups. She has worked with various communities in both Canada and China in the last 10 years. Her accomplishments include helping establish the first private non-for-profit social service centre in southern China and leading a community advocacy campaign for equitable healthcare in Toronto’s immigrant communities. Throughout, she continued to hone a broad set of skills in community research, project management, and leadership. Lechin holds a Bachelor of Law in Social Work from Sun Yet-Sen University in China and a Master of Social Work from Calgary University.
MBA Student Fellow Project
Lechin launched the ROTMOM Project in September 2018. Through this project, she sought to better understand the experiences of mothers in MBA programs. Using design thinking, she documented and designed ways aspiring leaders, who are also mothers of young children, can advance through Rotman’s MBA programs. The end goal is gender parity not only in business schools, but in leadership roles across Canada.
For this project, she interviewed 11 “ROTMOMs” from full-time, Morning/Evening and Executive MBA programs. They came from different industry backgrounds and have children aged from a few weeks old to early grade school.