Dr. Tania Bubela, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University (photo courtesy of SFU)
Upon first moving to Alberta in 1999, Dr. Tania Bubela found herself in what she describes as a classic conundrum for women in academia.
"My husband (Dr. David Hik) and I met as grad students," she explained.
"He then got a job at the University of Alberta, and I was left unemployed with two small children. When I decided to enroll in law school, he was a full professor and I was an undergraduate student again. This is so often what happens to women in science."
Less than twenty years and many twists and turns later, Bubela is now settling into her new position as Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University - a role she would never have foreseen for herself.
Curiously, law was Bubela's original career plan as a high school student growing up in Australia's capital city of Canberra before she was ultimately drawn to the biological sciences. After completing a PhD in Biology at the University of Sydney in 1995 she moved to Canada to pursue a faculty position at the Department of Zoology at the University of Toronto, where she taught courses in evolutionary genetics and other topics.
Even though her decision to transition to law was purely pragmatic, it brought her into contact with her most important mentor, Professor Timothy Caulfield.
"I had no intention of pursuing health law at the time, but my background in biology led me to become a research assistant for Professor Caulfield and the Health Law Institute, and I loved every single moment of it. We co-authored several papers on health law and ethics, and this turned me on to a field that was largely unknown to me. And I've stayed in it ever since."
As a Horace Harvey Gold Medal-winning JD graduate in 2003, Bubela quickly gained further exposure to health law by way of a clerkship with then-Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour in Ottawa, which coincided with a series of major biotech cases involving Monsanto and other multinational corporations. She also had the opportunity to work on health law cases during her articling at Field Law in Edmonton under the supervision of partner and fellow UAlberta Law alumnus James Casey, QC before passing the Bar in 2005 under the wing of Alberta Court of Appeal Justice (and the Faculty of Law's first female professor) Ellen Picard.
"Justice Picard has been a huge role model for me, and I was very proud that she was the one to do my Bar call," she said.
From 2005 to 2017, Bubela carved out her academic niche, first with the Alberta School of Business where she taught courses in intellectual property and technology commercialization and then at the UAlberta School of Public Health, where she served as Associate Dean of Research from 2014 to 2016. As newly appointed Dean of the School of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, she is thrilled to be leading a faculty renowned for the type of interdisciplinary work she has gravitated towards her whole life.
Looking back at her time at UAlberta Law, Bubela contends the legal training she received continues to deliver the goods in surprising ways.
"In addition to providing me with a very solid grounding in foundations of law, my legal education has given me things I never thought I'd use. In my role as Dean, solid grounding in good governance is paramount, as is a strong background in contract and administrative law. Beyond that, law trains you to think through problems and get the root of an issue, allowing you to come up with pragmatic solutions. In this my scientific training has also helped immensely."
Now a well-established figure in the health law world, her counsel on emerging new medical technologies is frequently sought by international consortia. Bubela concludes that law, while not on her radar until well into her academic career, ended up being the perfect career opportunity generator.
"The wonderful thing about law is that it intersects with pretty much every field out there. This made it the perfect choice for me. Life really can't be planned, as I was to learn, but my legal education has given me opportunities I never could have imagined."