Sahiti’s story begins in Kosovo. Sahiti says her family went through a challenging time in Kosovo even before the war began. Albanian Kosovars lived in a quasi-state, where many professionals were dismissed from their jobs because of their ethnic background, and Albanian education was not allowed under Serbian oppression. “My father completed his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine in Croatia in the years before the war but could not find work on his return to Kosova because of his ethnicity. It was a very economically and socially challenging time”

During the war in 1999 Saiti was a baby. As the situation in the country became critical, access to food and medicine became very scarce where at times her family ran out of milk to feed Sahiti, something many other mothers with young children report having faced at the time. “We fled to my mother’s village in the countryside, thinking we would be safer there. Unfortunately, this did not last very long. Their house was at the top of a hill in the village, which the Serbians wanted to use as a military vantage point. They shot warning shots and eventually advanced on the house with armed tanks. “ Sahiti says her parents have shared their difficulty journey where they ran for their lives; down the hill with Sahiti in their arms and bottles of milk in their backpacks as Serbian tanks climbed up their driveway. ”They fled to another village but eventually had to leave and go back to Prishtina when the surrounding villages were burned. Two weeks before NATO troops entered Kosovo.

Although Sahiti may not personally remember much of her story, her family has shared their remarkable and difficult journey they and other Kosovar’s faced during the war. A time and history that’s also inspired Sahiti’s passion in the medical field.


In Canada, she’s an inspiring face to the Albanian community and beyond. Sahiti’s family arrived with just a few suitcases in Canada, starting over a new life but that didn’t last long. Academics run in her family. Her father would begin a new journey and pursue new education, today he’s a Medical Laboratory Technologist working at QEII. Her sisters, one is completing her training in Sonography at Dalhousie University and another giving back to schools within her community and her brother has been accepted to top engineering programs in Canada. Whereas Sahiti herself is a TD Scholar, a recipient of a $70,000 scholarship for community leadership, she’s also been recognized by the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame Award for Medical Students, the Dalhousie Research in Medicine Award, the 3M National Student Fellowship.

“I’d like to also highlight my mother’s sacrifices and journey to resettlement. My mother did not speak any English when we arrived in Canada. At that point, she was 35 years old with three young children and no post-secondary education. She cleaned houses to supplement my father’s income, then worked as a housekeeper in the hospital, and has since worked her way into a position as a unit aide in the Emergency Department. Growing up, she was not told that she could be anything other than a wife and a mother, and yet her sense of self-efficacy and self-confidence have propelled her into a life and career that gives her so much more agency. The growth that she has experienced amongst all the difficulties she has encountered is admirable.”

Indeed, it is the determination and conviction of her mother that’s brought success to her whole family overcoming cultural barriers making Sahiti become one of the first generation of refugees in Canada’s medical field who has gone through Canada’s education system.