Amara Wilson-Zegil is a 17-year-old from Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Coming from a town of 600, Amara has grown up knowing that showing up matters, whether that be running electronic workshops for seniors or coaching youth hockey. She has been involved in her community from a young age. Whether participating on her hockey team, coaching youth soccer, running the backstage of a theatre program, or captaining her local robotics team, she is always ready to lend a helping hand.
Growing up in a community where STEM opportunities were limited, Amara often had to seek out and create opportunities to pursue her own interests in math, science, robotics, and hands-on learning. Through these experiences, she has set out to ensure that STEM access is available to everyone, no matter their location or economic situation.
As the Team Captain of an award-winning robotics program, Amara leads and supports a team of approximately 100 students, having previously served as Safety Lead and Pit Lead. She has extended that leadership beyond her own school through outreach across six elementary schools serving more than 1,800 children, introducing younger students to STEM through robotics demonstrations, technical training, and hands-on learning experiences.
Amara helped deliver free and pay-what-you-can robotics summer camps that have reached more than 1,200 youth. She also mentored more than 50 young people through FIRST Lego League robotics program and camps, and helped introduce children to engineering, design, coding, and robotics across Northern Ontario.
Amara is also the author of Robofriends Go to a Robotics Competition, a children’s book she created to introduce younger children to robotics, with proceeds supporting start-up STEM programming for rural schools and community groups. She is now developing Project RISE (Rural Initiative for STEM Equity), an initiative aimed at providing grants, programming, and opportunities that help more young people across Northern Ontario participate in STEM.
Whether it’s on the ice, being behind the scenes, or building a robot, Amara will continue to show up, because opportunity shouldn’t depend on your postal code.