Before enrolling at Yorkville University, V. Ophelia Rigault already had a bachelor’s degree, several decades of experience in the non-profit sector and a business of her own.
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What she lacked, she said, was a credential that could open the next door.
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“I’d reached the ceiling of what my Bachelor of Arts could do for me,” said the Yorkville University alumna.
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Breaking through that ceiling would take more than earning a Master of Education in Educational Leadership. It would take a scholarship she almost didn’t apply for, a willingness to start over and a growing conviction that the knowledge she was gaining could help her build opportunities for others, too.
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A Second Chance at Higher Education
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Rigault first moved to Canada from Trinidad with her family when she was six years old. Growing up in Toronto, she expected to graduate from high school and move straight into a government job. It wasn’t until a high school teacher encouraged her to pursue higher education that university became part of her plans.
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She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Psychology from York University and spent decades working in the non-profit sector. But by 2021, she found herself at another crossroads.
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“I was at a point where I felt the only thing that I could do was go back to school,” she said.
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The decision came at a difficult time. As a single parent working in the precarious non-profit sector, Rigault had experienced repeated layoffs and was balancing work with family responsibilities.
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“I was going through a lot at the time – I’d gotten laid off, was dealing with taking care of my child and an elderly parent, and was having some struggles physically. So, I wasn’t working and my income had decreased a lot.”
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Friends who had studied at Yorkville recommended its Master of Education offerings. The flexibility of studying online, course by course, meant Rigault could pursue a graduate degree without putting the rest of her life on hold.
Financing that degree, however, remained a major concern.
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The Scholarship That Made It Possible
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While applying to Yorkville, an admissions advisor encouraged Rigault to apply for the Jacob Markovitz Memorial Scholarship, a need-based award equivalent to a full year’s tuition for new students entering their first trimester of Yorkville’s Master of Education or Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology programs.
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Rigault had never heard of the scholarship. But when she learned the application asked applicants to share their story, rather than simply submit their academic credentials, she decided to apply.
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“I just submitted my story and didn’t really think of it again, because I assumed there would be so many other great stories for them to choose from. So, I was shocked when I found out I’d won – shocked and grateful,” she said, noting that the scholarship arrived at a critical moment.
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“If it wasn’t for that award, I was honestly considering quitting. I was struggling at the time, so winning it helped me to take a breath – and it paid for the rest of my degree.”
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With that support, Rigault was able to continue her studies – and found that the online learning experience was very different from what she had expected.
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Finding Support Online
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Having studied at York University as an undergraduate, Rigault was accustomed to large classes where contact with professors could be limited. At Yorkville, she found something different.
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“When I first started, I was taking my experience from when I did my BA, where the professors were there, but you had no contact with them. At Yorkville, I was able to say, ‘I’m struggling with this, I don’t really understand’ – and the professors would spend the time to help me to understand. That was really critical for me.”
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Several of those professors became mentors, relationships that continued well beyond graduation. Rigault has since turned to former faculty members for advice and reference letters as she has developed her work and, more recently, applied to doctoral studies.
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That support also helped her see what the degree could make possible.
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Turning Education Into Opportunity
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Rigault had founded REAL Talk Solutions in 2019, initially focusing on grief support. When COVID-19 hit, that work came to an abrupt halt.
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As she watched the pandemic disproportionately affect racialized, Indigenous and Black communities, Rigault began looking at grief and community support through an equity lens. REAL Talk Solutions evolved into the equity education company it is today.
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Rigault now works with leaders in education, helping school boards and organizations develop equity plans and conduct equity analysis. Her Yorkville degree, she says, gave her the credibility to pursue that work at a new level.
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“I came in with a bachelor’s in sociology, working in the non-profit sector for decades, and just had to reach that cap,” she said, noting that watching younger colleagues with master’s degrees move into roles above her own was part of what pushed her back to school.
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“The minute I got my master’s degree, I found that new doors were suddenly open to me. I knew it was a credibility that I needed to have in order to get the programs that I’m working with today, like working with the school boards.”
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But the impact of Rigault’s education hasn’t been limited to her own career.
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Her non-profit, The SHINE Club, grew out of a racist experience her child had at school. A supportive principal encouraged Rigault, who had recently graduated, to create something that could address the issue.
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What began informally eventually caught the attention of the local school board, prompting Rigault to formalize the initiative. Today, SHINE operates in schools and community settings in Eastern Ontario – with a focus in the Kingston area – and has reached more than 600 children.
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Through sessions led by trained community volunteers and racialized educators, children have a space to talk with adults who share their lived experience.
From Research to a Book
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Rigault’s Yorkville experience also inspired another project: a book.
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Her master’s research became the foundation for The CAREING Leader: Mastering the 7 Pillars of Inclusive Leadership. The idea grew out of her desire to make research accessible to frontline leaders who might not have time to work through dense academic texts.
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“I wanted to write a book that had research in it – I’d just graduated – but also something that had a story of my experience with leadership, and gave people a framework of how they could be a caring leader,” she said. “What I felt was missing when people talked about leadership: they forgot about the equity component. In order to be a real, caring, effective leader, one must always consider what equity is.”
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The book’s seven pillars – Compassionate, Authentic, Resilient, Equity-focused, Intentionally inquisitive, Nurturing, and grounded in a Growth mindset – now inform the training Rigault provides to SHINE Club facilitators and the school leaders she works with.
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Her graduate degree has also taken her beyond her own organizations. She now works as a project manager for the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology (CCWESTT), contributing to a federal gender report card on women and gender equality.
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“That’s a project that I’m so proud to be part of,” she said. “My background in research helped me understand the work coming from expert researchers and contribute to the writing, and I was also able to bring a lens of leadership knowledge.”
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For Rigault, the experience challenged one of her own assumptions about what a Master of Education could lead to.
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“I thought going into a master’s in education, you have to be a teacher, you have to be a principal – and that’s why I never did it. But when I completed it and saw the wide variety of scope of how I could utilize it, it really helped me to also expand the scope of where I could look for employment opportunities or contracts.”
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What’s Next
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The opportunities have continued to grow. Earlier this year, Rigault received the 2026 Kingston Newcomer Entrepreneur Awards’ Community Builder Award, recognizing her work building community and collaboration.
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This September, she will begin a Doctor of Education at Western University – a step she says would not have felt possible without the foundation her Yorkville degree provided.
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“When you have that pivotal moment in your life – for me, it was my master’s – you feel more confident because you have that foundation, that experience of going to school and pursuing higher education. I don’t feel as scared to try this opportunity.”
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For Rigault, that confidence may be the most lasting result of her decision to return to school.
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“I’m proud that a child who came here at six years old is now going to pursue the highest level of education in her field,” she said.
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And for anyone who, like Rigault once did, feels they’ve reached a ceiling but isn’t sure whether it’s too late to go back to school, her advice is simple:
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“Do it anyway,” she said. “If you have a dream to pursue higher education, don’t let anything stop you.”
