Program and Business Services Coordinator

Kay Martinez

Bio

Kay Martinez joined the University of Toronto Entrepreneurship team in 2020. As a Project Coordinator, she managed the IP Education Program, as well as the grant-funded projects to adapt the program and scale it up for province-wide adoption. Kay has over eight years of program management and financial experience working with universities, government, and international non-profits. Before moving to Canada, she worked on outreach and education projects in the Philippines and then as a government contractor to the U.S. State Department. Since switching to academia, she has worked at the Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University and the graduate office at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

15 seconds with Kay

The invention you can’t live without: Printing Press. At any given moment, I am reading at least 2-3 books from the local library, and my own collection of comics, novels, and non-fiction books is quite extensive. Stories and ideas are how we stay connected, across the lines of longitude and latitude and time, and sometimes I think we forget how astonishing it is that we can read texts from centuries past. That it’s possible to hold the exact same document that someone printed and read 300 years ago. If you ever get the chance to do it, it’s actually the coolest thing ever— a physical reminder that the ideas we have today can still endure and be shared well beyond our own space and time.

Hidden talent: I can fold a tiny paper crane that is half the size of the average fingernail.

Personal motto: Leave every place better than you found it. When in doubt, be kind and choose adventure.