The Equitable Systems Design program gave me the confidence and tools to reimagine systems at work and in my community. It challenged me to question what I once accepted as the norm and showed me how to design with equity at the core."
Megha Khurana, Graduate, UBC Micro-certificate in Equitable Systems Design
As a human resources professional, Megha Khurana has always been passionate about equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). But it was during a course on intersectionality that she realized something deeper: inequities aren’t just about individual experiences; they are built into systems and structures. “I didn’t want to create programs that only looked inclusive from my perspective,” Megha says. “I wanted to understand how to design equitable solutions from the ground up.”
That search led her to UBC’s Micro-certificate in Equitable Systems Design (ESD), a program that challenges assumptions, embraces design thinking, and reflects on the systems shaping everyday experiences. For Megha, it was exactly the foundation she was looking for. “When I looked at the program information, it spoke to me because it spoke about design thinking and also how everybody's a designer. How you can build equitable designs.”
From the very beginning, the program challenged her to pause and reflect. “I realized how often inequities are accepted as the default. We rarely question why things are designed the way they are, or who gets left out,” she explains. Reflection activities and peer discussions became turning points. “The reflection activities, the collaborative learning, and my peers’ perspectives gave me the courage to pause, reframe, and reimagine.”
One of Megha’s biggest aha moments came when instructors asked her to consider metrics themselves as a design choice. “I always thought of success as efficiency or ROI. But then I realized, metrics are also by design and they can exclude whole groups of people. They’re designed by people with certain perspectives, and they don’t work for everyone. That shift changed how I measure success. Now I ask: who’s excluded? Why didn’t it work for them? That’s where the real learning is.”
This new mindset transformed her approach at work. When she redesigned her organization’s leadership development portfolio, she prioritized co-design and equity-focused practices, inviting fresh perspectives into the process. Sharing this new philosophy with senior leadership was a full-circle moment. “They asked thoughtful, challenging questions, which I welcomed. It showed they were engaged, reflective, and open to re-examining long standing structures through a new lens.”
Beyond work, Megha has carried these lessons into her coaching, mentoring, parenting, and community involvement. “As a woman of color, I have always lived that insider, outsider duality where I’ve lived on the margins. Over the years with my education and experience and finding people who have advocated for me I’ve been able to reshape and redesign spaces where I was usually not invited to.” Whether advising HR mentees, volunteering, or discussing hiring practices with her husband, she now brings a critical lens and a willingness to challenge the default.
What makes the ESD program unique, she says, is its emphasis on practical application, reflection and collaborative learning. “You’re not just taught frameworks, you live them. I am now able to look at everything with a very critical lens. Now I look at the ground level, I look at the motivations behind the design. Why was it built a certain way? And I also always look at who is excluded. And it's so interesting for me to learn that there are groups of people and communities who are excluded and it's not accidental, most times, it's by design. It's by choice.”
Her advice to prospective students? “You're going to be reflecting a lot. You're going to be learning from other people's experiences and you'll be required to share your experiences. You’ll be challenged to rethink what you’ve always believed to be true. But that’s where growth happens and where equity becomes possible.”