Being a high achiever with a passion for human rights and combating anti-Black racism helped land her role as the Executive Director and General Counsel at the Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC).
But it took a village of support -- from her family, her legal peers, and her girlfriends -- to get Moya Teklu to where she is today.
Like many first-year law students, Moya was a straight-A overachiever before she got to law school. Like many first-year law students, that changed when she got to law school. Moya had a hard time coming to terms with this new reality. She questioned whether she belonged in law school. The fact that Moya was one of only 5 Black students in her cohort and that there wasn’t a single Black member of the faculty didn’t help.
During law school, Moya found an unexpected champion in Justice Lorne Sossin, who was one of Moya’s professors. Moya jokes that Justice Sossin gave her a C+ but also hired her to be his research assistant, “so it balances out”. About 10 years later, Justice Sossin also asked Moya to return to UofT to join him in teaching Legal Ethics. Justice Sossin’s support and her experience as an adjunct professor truly changed her perspective on academic success, highlighting that grades do not define you.
Moya summered and articled at Koskie Minsky where she worked on class actions, employment, pension law, and union-side legal work. When she was not hired back, her world felt like it was crashing down around her. Little did she know that this was the beginning of the winding road that would lead her to the job she holds today.
When job hunting after articling, Urmi Chowdhury, one of the other articling students at Koskie Minsky put Moya in touch with Urmi’s former classmate, Sunil Gurmukh. Sunil was working as a staff lawyer at the African Canadian Clinic (ACLC). Because of her interest in human rights and passion for advocacy, Sunil encouraged Moya to apply for a job at the clinic. Moya was hired and worked there for two years. She focused on combating anti-Black racism through test case litigation, participated in policy reforms, met with ministers, and even ended up going to the United Nations. By the time she was a couple years out of law school, Moya already had her name on a Supreme Court of Canada decision and made oral submissions at the Federal Court.
Although the work at the ACLC was fulfilling, Moya was unhappy with the work environment and management.Ron Lebi, Moya’s unofficial mentor (and BFF) from Koskie Minsky, sent Moya a posting for a position at Mount Sinai Hospital and encouraged her to apply. For the next three years, Moya worked at Mount Sinai Hospital as a Specialist in the hospital’s Human Rights and Health Equity Office. Here, she conducted workplace investigations and drafted human rights policies. She also helped develop the “Are you an ALLY?” campaign, including developing and delivering training sessions.
Because of her experience with training sessions, in about 2014, Marylin Kanee, the Director of the Human Rights and Health Equity Office, introduced Moya to legal educator and consultant, Pam Chapman. Pam introduced Moya to the world of legal education. Since then, Pam and Moya have gone on to develop and deliver training sessions on anti-oppression, anti-racism, unconscious bias, and cultural competence through the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators, the National Judicial Institute, Osgoode Professional Development, the Law Society of Ontario, and other organizations. Because of the work that Pam and Moya have done together, Moya has also delivered training sessions to almost every judge and justice of the peace in the Ontario Court of Justice.
In 2015, Moya left Mount Sinai Hospital and began working at Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) as a staff lawyer. In 2017, LAO announced that it was withdrawing its funding from the African Canadian Legal Clinic (ACLC). Because of her experience combatting anti-Black racism and working in the clinic system, Moya became responsible for developing and implementing a plan to ensure that LAO continued to deliver clinic law services to Black Ontarians, without interruption.
Among other things, Moya pulled together an advisory committee of prominent members of Ontario’s Black communities, including Zanana Akande, the first Black woman elected as an Ontario MPP; Sandy Hudson, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement in Canada. This advisory committee went on to become the inaugural board of directors of the Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC). Moya helped the Board file the articles of incorporation and develop the job description and posting that led to BLAC hiring its first executive director, Ruth Goba.
For the next few years, Moya continued to work at LAO in various capacities, including as Policy Counsel for LAO’s Racialized Communities Strategy, Special Advisor in the Clinic Law Services Division, and Litigation Counsel in the General Counsel’s Office. In the Spring of 2021, BLAC announced that it was looking for a new executive director because Ruth Goba resigned. Applying for the position seemed like the next logical step. Moya joined BLAC in June 2021.
After spending a few months doing administrative work and getting comfortable in her new role, today, you will find Moya enthusiastically consulting with community organizations and marginalized members of Black communities, participating in national campaigns about criminal records and decriminalization, and developing internal processes and policies to assist community members. She looks forward to doing much more.
Being on the front lines of battling racism, Moya frequently deals with upsetting and emotionally draining issues. But, as an optimist, she has learned to channel rage and sadness of the injustices she witnesses into her work and use these emotions to give her energy and keep moving forward to make change.
Moya describes her upbringing as lower-middle class. Her father is a custodian in the Toronto Catholic District School Board and her mother is a Personal Support Worker in a long-term care facility. She jokes that she is her parents’ retirement plan. So, when she left the big firm world and started working in the clinic system, finances and the ability to provide for her family were a big concern. But now, Moya wouldn’t trade her meandering career path for money. She loves her job and finds it incredibly fulfilling.
“The things that didn’t work out – the disappointments, the rejections, the frustrations – they’re what connected me to the people that helped lead me here.”