When Ava Joharian was still just a little girl dreaming of a brighter future for herself in Iran, she began compiling a bucket list of all the things she wanted to achieve while studying abroad one day.
One of the top feats on that to-do list was being selected to represent her future university’s graduating class as its valedictorian – an accomplishment she was recently able to check off for herself upon being named Yorkville University’s 2025 Student Graduation Speaker in Ontario.
“I think 13-year-old me is kicking and screaming in the corner right now, because this has definitely been a dream,” said the Bachelor of Business Administration – Project Management grad, who now works at Yorkville as a Project Coordinator, assisting with the university’s new program development.
“Being valedictorian was one of those items on my study abroad bucket list when I first started dreaming of this whole adventure, and it means a lot for it to be at Yorkville.”
Joharian’s journey to becoming Yorkville’s grad speaker is one that began at the tender age of 16, when she left her entire family behind in Tehran and moved to Canada in pursuit of a bigger future than she thought possible to achieve at home. Even as a child, she said, she recognized the limitations of the education system she experienced in Iran.
“One of the memories my mom always refers to is of me coming home from school one day crying, because a teacher had made one of my classmates sit on the ground because she had a learning disability. There’s not much space for that in the Iranian education system, and there definitely wasn’t 10 or 15 years ago,” she recalled.
“I always aspired to be a part of a better education system…and by the time I was 13, I came up with this big dream of, ‘I’m going to do it, I’m going to go study abroad.’”
Fast-forward three years, and Joharian made that dream a reality. While immigrating alone as a high schooler wasn’t easy and came with many strains – both financial and otherwise – the then-aspiring doctor said it was her studies and her passion for education that got her through the tough times.
And, despite having to adjust to a new culture, a new language, and a new life upon her arrival in smalltown Aurora, Ontario, Joharian said she’s now glad she made the leap when she did.
“It definitely was hard, I will never deny that. Not having your family nearby, having to think about money and ‘What am I going to do next,’ and people always questioning me about, ‘Why did you come so early?’…but I think, for everything I went through, I’m much stronger now,” she said.
“I’m so glad now that I came at 16, because I don’t think I would have been as, just, head-on with everything that I came across otherwise. At 16, I was just so full of this dream that nothing could stop me.”
And nothing did. Despite her personal struggles, Joharian threw herself into her studies and thrived academically, graduating as the recipient of her high school’s Governor General’s Academic Medal, which is awarded to the graduating student with the highest CGPA.
But it was around the same time she was preparing to graduate, she said, that COVID-19 struck, and although she initially planned on entering medicine, the pandemic forced her to rethink her next move.
“COVID came and it really shifted my idea of how I saw the world. I got into the workforce, I volunteered at a hospital…and my perspective matured,” she said, noting that, for one, she came the realization that she wouldn’t be able to support herself through pre-med.
“But I also saw that going to medical school isn’t the only way to help people – a teacher helps people, an administrator helps people, a project manager helps people. I realized there are other ways to make an impact in the world, and that’s the only thing I wanted – to make an impact.”
After completing a business diploma at a local college, Joharian decided to pursue her Bachelor of Business Administration degree Yorkville University in April 2022 – opting to pursue a specialization in Project Management as a way to learn to practical skills she needed to make the impact in the world she strived for.
While Yorkville wasn’t her original plan, Joharian said she instantly “fell in love” with the way the school works and how, in addition to its academic focus, there’s also a real sense of the importance of making connections and being part of something bigger.
“At Yorkville, there’s just so much opportunity for you to get involved with professors and on-campus staff, and really, really take something away from your time here,” she said.
“To me, Yorkville was everything I wanted, because there was so much to get involved with,” she added, urging incoming students to take advantage of Yorkville’s smaller sizes and the one-on-one interactions with professors they afford.
For Joharian, being named her class’s Student Graduation Speaker is not just a personal triumph, but a tribute to the journey she has taken, the lessons she has learned, and the people who supported her along the way – especially her mother.
“I’m so glad that she’s here to celebrate this,” Joharian said, noting that she’s most excited about looking down from the stage while she’s delivering her convocation address and seeing her mother in the crowd.
“I hope she sees it as a tribute to all that she did for me, because all she wanted was a better education and a better future for me. This is one small step towards that goal and I’d like to dedicate that to her, of course, and to myself, and everything that we accomplished together.”
