If there’s one takeaway from UTSC alumna Chanile Vines’ (BSc 2012) extraordinary career path to date, it’s this: don’t get hung up on choosing just one career.
Vines moved to Canada from Jamaica a scant few months before she began a Psychology degree at UTSC in 2008. It was the international feel of campus that kept her motivated through her first cold Canadian winters. And, having grown up in the rural countryside of the island nation – an area she describes as having no running water and little electricity – Vines says she developed an acute “appetite for life.”
Says Vines, “I have the opportunity to access so much, and that is a huge motivation for me.”
She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in 2012, which she followed with a Master’s degree in Psychology from the University of Liverpool in 2019, as well as sommelier training with Wine & Spirit Education Trust. Since graduation, she’s been applying her skill sets and education across three vastly different, yet simultaneous, career paths.
The Health Researcher and App Developer
Vines wasn’t sure how she wanted to apply her psychology foundation post-graduation, so she took some time to volunteer. One of those positions was for Baycrest Health Sciences.
Baycrest’s focus on aging appealed to Vines, who had been a caregiver for her elderly grandmother. She started volunteering for Baycrest, and was offered a full-time position as a researcher, testing a paper-based cognitive stimulation tool to slow down the rate of dementia decline. Recognizing an important gap in dementia care, Vines developed a health care app for caregivers and those living with dementia. The resulting ITAV (It Takes A Village) app has some unique functionality, explains Vines.
“The app has a function assessment tool that will not only allow for [measuring] functional ability but will guide the development of care plans, identify routines and goals, and search for resources close to home,” says Vines.
The app also includes cultural and language components that connect people across Ontario, a real benefit for our multicultural communities.
In 2019, Vines moved on to SE Health, where she works with doctors and others interested in health care technology. Her role is to “provide them with a road map” for health technology discoveries, and has developed a framework for technology that integrates cultural aspects.
Since the pandemic hit, research in hospitals and elderly care homes has stalled. While she still consults on health technology products, the sudden gaps that appeared in Vines’ schedule are fueling her other careers.
The Sommelier, Wine Importer and Wine Club host
“Wine was just a hobby,” says Vines, who fell into a second career in wine in 2014 when she decided to host a wine tasting in a wine bar. The event so popular it sold out in a single day, as were the next few tastings she hosted.
“I love this and can do it forever,” she found herself thinking, “but can I make a business out of it?”
That train of thought led Vines to develop her own wine import business, Vines Play, which she pairs with a wine club and events.
She concentrates on the more innovative wineries associated with new world wines – South Africa, Australia, Brazil and Argentina. The LCBO is a customer, as are several local restaurants. Vines also sells wine directly to consumers through her wine club.
The Actor
Having always been involved in local theatre productions, Vines has pursued acting as a space for self-expression, growth and healing. “I go to the theatre when things get rough,” explains Vines, whose first role was Beneatha in “Raisin in the Sun” for Toronto’s Classic Theatre Project.
She found early success as a member of the Regent Park One program, which ended with a short film screening at TIFF. (Vines can also be spotted in a small role in the upcoming Season 3 of the hit Amazon show, The Boys).
Career intersection
While she enjoys her separate career hats, COVID has brought some remarkable intersections to her working lives. Last year, for instance, Vines wrote, developed and acted in a short film for Wine Spectator’s 2020 Film Competition. The resulting film, Little Things, became one of nine finalist in the global competition.
The film offers viewers a glimpse of some of the systemic barriers facing black and racialized people in the wine industry. From microaggressions with requests for “white-only marketing” to discriminatory clients, “Little Things is about how much the seemingly not-so-difficult hard things gather up, build up and become such big barriers in life and work,” says Vines.
Her work on the film, though, has become just one front for her activism. Along with six other women, Vines has founded non-profit Vinequity to “ensure that people who identify as Black, Indigenous or People of Colour (including BIPOC people who identify as LGBTQ+ or are living with a disability) that work in all aspects of the wine industry are given equitable treatment and opportunities to access, grow and thrive as visible leaders in the Canadian Wine Industry,” according to the website. The non-profit has taken several tangible steps, including the creation of scholarships and the development of mentorship opportunities.
Not content to stop there, Vines is exploring her psychology background through a new short film, “Altered.” It’s the story of a crisis help line worker. A caller in crisis forces her to examine her own fragmented identity.
For Vines, the subject is personal. She volunteered for a crisis help line after graduation, and experienced firsthand how emotionally draining the role of a crisis worker can be. She also views the film as a space to explore the impact of COVID-19 on mental health in relation to gender and racialized people.
As the boundaries between home and work have been rapidly erased under COVID, unforeseen mental health challenges have been on the rise for women – especially for BIPOC women, says Vines, as their potentially performative work personas clash with their ‘home’ lives.
“The film is about trying to define who these women are when all these things collide,” says Vines.
Master yourself, not your skills
If Vines was to describe the thread that binds her disparate career paths together, she’d say it’s her inquisitive nature.
“I want to answer people’s biggest questions, and research is at the core of everything I do,” she says.
For those searching for their career paths, though, Vines counsels that they are better off focusing less on mastering skills, and more on mastering themselves.
“Sometimes we feel we have to sacrifice some parts of ourselves in order to pursue others,” cautions Vines, “But, if we step back and think, we are likely to find that the roles we are drawn to are actually perfectly shaped puzzle pieces that define our true multifaceted nature. By mastering yourself, you have the ability to transfer learning from one industry to another. That is how you disrupt and innovate.”
While her trajectory might look exhausting from the outside, Vines remarkable career to date amply illustrates her point.
Photo: Chanile Vines (Andrew James, City Wide Studio)