Freiheit, Robyn

From the beginning of her undergraduate year, Robyn Freiheit, BKin 2015, was highly involved with campus life as a leader, a student representative and a project coordinator. In 2012, Robyn was the KIN team recruiter and supervisor with the Kinesiology Transition Program for new KIN students, and worked to plan KIN programming for UBC’s annual orientation day. That year she also provided personalized advising for, and fostered relationships with, KIN students as an academic peer advisor. And in 2014 she was subsequently employed as a Special Projects Coordinator for UBC’s ‘Make Your Mark’ Campaign. Robyn acted as student liaison and advocated for student rights on campus between various sectors of the University.

Robyn had been studying the social aspects of Kinesiology, specifically public health, and health policy and law, but found a home in marketing when she worked as VP Public Relations for the 2015 Kinesiology Games. In this role, Robyn worked on a full re-brand of event and marketing materials for the largest student-run undergraduate Kinesiology conference in Canada.

Upon graduation from Kinesiology, Robyn moved to Portugal to explore her family heritage and pursue a new life-style. After working in marketing and project management jobs for a number of years Robyn says she “became uneasy in my roles as they were not satisfying my need to make a larger impact in the social issues around me”. So she took a leap of faith this year and started a Master of Public Health at the University of Porto in Portugal. “I have been interested in public health for quite some time due to the interdisciplinary nature of the field. I am focusing my thesis on food insecurity in the Azores islands in an attempt to better understand the “why” to the problem and with the hope of influencing future research and policy efforts. I love studying this subject which involves health, policy, sustainable food systems and supply-chains. She continues her role with UBC as the alumni UBC representative for Portugal and recently had an alumni story published in Alumni UBC’s Trek Magazine.