Age: 39
Job Title: Communications Advisor, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Why She’s Top 40: For helping our national police force’s public outreach campaign and for acting locally through a series of volunteer jobs.
How I Relax: “I love the outdoors, so I do a lot of climbing and hiking, and I include travelling in that category as well. I also do a great deal of reading.”
Considering her parents were forced to flee Uganda’s tyranny under Idi Amin – a dictator so ruthless he reportedly killed an estimated 500,000 of his own people – it comes as no surprise that an element of community consciousness is a major driving force in Narmin Hassam-Clark’s life.
“Their lives were overturned in 1972 and they came to a place like Canada, where there is an abundance of opportunities and people can do anything they want with a bit of hard work and dedication,” says Hassam-Clark. “That sense of social justice weaves through everything I do.”
It’s fitting that her entire professional life has revolved around the public service, including the federal Department of Justice, which led her to her current post at the RCMP, where she’s been working the past nine years. Her responsibilities include providing strategic planning and advice to support an advertising and marketing campaign as part of the force’s national recruiting strategy.
Away from the office, she’s equally diligent in serving the community. She’s regularly involved in the World Partnership Walk (a charity dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa and Asia), serves on the board of Hostelling International for the Pacific Mountain Region and, though she’s a Muslim, she also volunteers with the Christmas Bureau.
“Christmas is my favourite holiday,” says Hassam-Clark, who’s volunteered by delivering hampers and staffing donation desks for the organization since 1999.
Coming from a family that had to frantically leave a war-torn dictatorship isn’t something Hassam-Clark takes lightly. She feels she owes much of her success to the courage, perseverance and virtuosity of her mother and father. “I wholeheartedly credit my parents for instilling such a great set of values,” she says. “They set up for me from a very early age the amazing life I live right now.”
