Name: Meray Sadek

Job Title: President  

Email: gsa-president@uwaterloo.ca 

Job description: The President is the Chief Operating Officer of the GSA and is responsible for all operations of the organisation including governance and financial obligations. The President oversees all GSA’s services and projects to ensure that its mandate to support the graduate student experience is met. 

Meet Meray 

I am a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, proudly identifies as an Afro-Indigenous Coptic minority woman. Her research investigates the intersecting forces of religious, gendered, and state-driven discrimination experienced by Coptic Orthodox Christians (Copts) in Saudi Arabia. She examines how systemic exclusions in Saudi Arabia—such as the kafala system, “Expat Dependent Fees,” and patriarchal controls—drive migration and shape post-migration experiences. Her work contributes to critical migration studies and the sociology of religion, offering insights into the lived realities of marginalized communities and informing policies on systemic inequities.

If you were to choose your superpower, what would it be?

The ability to instantly speak and understand any language.  

Which movie, TV show or book can you watch or read over and over without getting tired of it?    

“Illegal” Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders by Shahram Khosravi.

If you could spend the rest of your life doing only one thing, what would it be?

Serving my community by creating inclusive spaces where people feel heard, supported, and empowered.