Episode #93: What Are You Gonna Do for This Country in the Next 100 Years? With Kumaran Nadesan of Computek College
Computek College turns 35 this year. If you speak to virtually any member of Canada's 500,000-strong Tamil Canadian diaspora, someone in their circle studied there. Elected officials, business owners, healthcare workers — the college's roots run so deep in the GTA's immigrant communities that its reach is measured less in enrollment numbers and more in families.
Kumaran Nadesan, CEO of Computek and Group CEO of 369 Global, joined the college five years ago after 15 years in the Ontario provincial government. He came in with a policy mind and a community organizer's instincts — and he's been applying both ever since. In this episode of the EdUp Canada Podcast, host Michael Sangster sits with Kumaran across conversations about a 750-PSW Durham Region partnership, a Kenya pilot program designed to train future Canadian healthcare workers at source before they ever land, and a recently published book — The Impolite Canadian: Why Playing Nice Is Costing Us the Future — that asks a direct question of everyone in every room they have the privilege of occupying: what are you going to do for this country?
The episode covers everything from cybersecurity curriculum to cultural intelligence to what it means for an instructor who's been at Computek for years to have changed more than a thousand families — not just students. It's a conversation about a sector that has been doing labour market integration for over 160 years, and a college that is quietly extending that work to Kenya, East Africa, and beyond.
What to expect
[00:04:30] — 35 Years and 500,000 Tamil Canadians
[00:06:30] — Not Just a Business. A Mission.
[00:07:00] — Embedded in Community: Meeting the Ashanti King
[00:10:00] — "I've Been to Those Places"
[00:12:00] — Training Canada's PSWs in Nairobi Before They Land
[00:19:30] — 750 PSWs and the Durham Region Partnership
[00:27:00] — "What Are You Gonna Do for This Country Over the Next 100 Years?"
[00:31:00] — Savitri David and a Thousand Families
Read the full transcript here: https://share.descript.com/view/t7AoD6RP2Xe