When she stood in a crowded room high up on Polytechnique Montréal’s mountainside campus last summer, Ruby Sinclair knew that receiving the first-ever Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Excellence Scholarship for undergraduate women in engineering was a great honour that would go a long way in helping her achieve her goals.

What the 20-year-old finishing her third year of mechanical engineering at Queen’s University didn’t anticipate was everything else that has come along with the $25,000 award. In the last eight months, Sinclair has done speaking engagements and had people in high-level positions seek out her opinion. She has written a magazine article and made a network of contacts she has leveraged for the benefit of her fellow students.

“I’ve never felt that special in my life — ever. And the reason I felt that way was not because of the actual $25,000, which was definitely incredible. … It was more so that these really powerful and influential people believed in what I stand for,” said Sinclair, who describes her credo as engineering with empathy. “If there’s one takeaway from this, it’s that I just have so much credibility and recognition from receiving this.”

And she is using it to make a difference.

With applications now open for the next Claudette MacKay-Lassonde scholarship — which will be announced in June and given out at Polytechnique in August — Sinclair took a moment to offer her advice to a new crop of candidates while reflecting on a whirlwind year.

As soon as she got back to her Kingston, Ont., campus in the fall, she noticed how professors and students she had never met, industry players and dignitaries, started soliciting her views.

“They would ask my opinion on women and engineering and a lot of conversations about AI, involving technology. And that was very new to me,” Sinclair said. “It felt very empowering because being in a position where my opinion can have influence on the community and the........

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