Ladan Yousef

Ladan Yousef is a Licensed Practical Nurse with diverse experience across various settings within Alberta Health Services. Her undergraduate background is in public health and leadership, where this further sparked her interest in addressing health inequities. Her frontline work has allowed her to develop a broad and practical skill set, grounded in compassion, accountability, and service. She is also a Master of Science in Public Health student at the University of Alberta, which strengthens her ability to connect bedside care with population-level realities. Ladan’s nursing practice is rooted in an understanding of the social determinants of health, and she recognizes how housing instability, addiction, income insecurity, food access, and systemic barriers shape health outcomes long before individuals enter hospitals or clinics. Despite her demanding schedule as a full-time student and a nurse, she continues to prioritize community work.

Service is not something she does when she has time; it is part of who she is. Ladan’s work is especially significant in the context of homelessness, harm reduction, and community outreach during a time when many have turned away from society’s most vulnerable. While public attention has increasingly shifted elsewhere, homelessness in Canada has worsened, and stigma has deepened. Ladan has remained present in this work, approaching individuals experiencing homelessness with dignity, care, and consistency rather than judgment or distance. In 2025, she was recognized as the University of Lethbridge Volunteer Award recipient, acknowledging volunteer and community hours completed while working full-time and pursuing her degree, and reflecting her sustained commitment to community care beyond clinical settings.

As a team lead in community-powered outreach, Ladan has helped guide and support efforts that achieved measurable, life-saving impact. Over the past year alone, BethechangeYYC, where Ladan worked, her team facilitated nearly 20,000 frontline outreach interactions, distributed over 11,000 sandwiches and more than 100,000 essential food items, and provided 4,000 referrals to housing, shelter, and health services, with approximately 20 percent of all interactions resulting in direct referrals.

These outcomes reflect not only scale, but trust. The team also supported winter response efforts, first aid, street-level public safety, and emergency medical responses, contributing thousands of volunteer and practicum hours across Calgary. Her work with Bethechangeyyc has inspired her to keep using her knowledge and skills to work with non-profit organizations, helping to overcome barriers and build rapport and trust with clients, especially when trust is difficult achieve. Ladan has also served as a medical team lead at large-scale community pop-up care events and continues to support outreach through education, advocacy, and coordination.

Ladan’s leadership reflects humility and service in its truest form, aligned with the values Islam teaches. She does not treat community work as charity or performance; for her, it is both a civic and Islamic responsibility. Whether through healthcare, outreach, or mentorship, she prioritizes presence, dignity, and follow-through. Her work demonstrates a commitment to meeting people where they are, especially in moments when they are most overlooked, and to ensuring that compassion remains central to care in systems that often fail those who need it most, particularly marginalized and unhoused populations.

What are the most meaningful aspects of this person's work and life? 

Ladan Yousef’s work is shaped by lived experience and responsibility to her community. She grew up in government housing and low-income environments, where she experienced the structural realities of poverty firsthand. Within her Somali community, she witnessed how addiction and systemic neglect affected families, including her own. These experiences  they deepened her commitment to her community.

As a result, Ladan has dedicated her professional path to working in spaces where care, advocacy, and support for marginalized communities are central. Her work is centred in understanding the work and applying it with compassion and an informed strategy. She approaches community work with credibility because she has lived the challenges she now seeks to address. She has volunteered in multiple community centre that have celebrated her dedication during harsh weather conditions and even on days people celebrate festival with family, Ladan has allocated her time for the community. Ladan ensures that community members are never an after thought and her work shows her priorities are straight and she is committed to solving issues, she has experienced.

How has this individual overcome the challenges they face? 

Ladan has navigated ongoing financial and low-income challenges while supporting herself and contributing to her family. Despite these pressures, she remained committed to her education and personal development. She has balanced responsibility with resilience by continuing her schooling and staying engaged in activities that provide stability and belonging, including her involvement in a Muslim soccer team.

Her perseverance is reflected in her ability to move forward without minimizing hardship. Ladan has experienced set backs as someone who had to navigate the entire nursing field independently, but she has succeeded and created a rapport for herself in every unit she has worked in. Her barriers have strengthened her and never dimmed her light. Despite the setbacks or the family losses, Ladan has persevered and is now pursuing a Masters at University of Alberta, one of the top universities in Canada. She has built resilience through consistency, discipline, and an ongoing commitment to growth, even when circumstances made that path difficult.

How has this individual empowered you and/or our communities? 

As a hijabi Muslim woman and a person of colour, I was often afraid of entering spaces at all, let alone carrying myself with confidence. Ladan showed me that it is possible to stand firmly in your faith while still advocating for yourself and your community. Through her example, I learned that strength does not require compromise of religion or identity.

Ladan has empowered me, and many other Muslimahs, by showing us how to advocate while remaining rooted in our values. She leads in a way that affirms who we are, rather than asking us to dilute ourselves to belong. For anyone navigating life in a non-Muslim environment, Ladan is an immediate source of inspiration and guidance. She has become a trusted point of contact for academic, career, and spiritual mentorship, offering support that is both practical and grounded in faith.

Through Ladan, I also learned to enter volunteer spaces with intention rather than self-interest. Before, I viewed involvement through the pressure of credentials and résumés, shaped by environments that reward visibility over sincerity. Ladan showed me a different approach: to show up for the sake of community, without expectation of recognition or return. She models service as responsibility, not performance. By watching how she prioritizes people over optics, I learned to ground my work in purpose rather than validation. This shift has changed how I engage with community spaces. I now enter them with clarity, humility, and commitment, understanding that real impact is built through presence and care, not titles or lines on a résumé.

Name a Black Muslim woman who has been an inspiration to you and why

I would say my mom is my biggest inspiration and someone I want to nominate. She has faced and overcome many challenges but remains grounded in positivity and gratitude towards God. She immigrated to a new country with children, navigating unfamiliar systems, cultures, and expectations while ensuring we were safe, fed, and supported. We moved often, sometimes between low-income neighbourhoods, and resources were limited, but she never allowed those circumstances to define what was possible for us.

My mom’s highest level of formal education was grade 8, yet she has always believed deeply in the value of learning and remains curious. She had aspirations to continue her education and build a different life for herself, but those dreams were put on hold as she focused on raising six children. Despite this, she made countless sacrifices to ensure we had access to opportunities she never did. She taught us resilience through her actions, faith through her consistency, and strength through her ability to persevere even when the odds were stacked against her.

Watching her navigate barriers, financial instability, and the emotional weight of adapting to the Western world has shaped my understanding of what true leadership and courage look like. Her life is a reminder that education, success, and impact are not only measured by degrees or titles, but by the lives we shape and the values we pass on. Everything I strive for today is rooted in her sacrifices, her push for us to be kind and better Muslims, and her unwavering belief in us.