Sarah Cestnick
Height: 5’9
Hometown: Burlington, ON
Sponsors: Friends & Family
Sarah Cestnick is an anti-human trafficking advocate and a business professional in the financial marketing industry with a passion for giving back. At the University of Waterloo, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Business and Communications with Dean’s Honours distinction. She attributes her entrepreneurial spirit to her upbringing immersed in hockey, the arts, and travel. She has accumulated thousands of volunteer hours across international borders and has received various awards in business, leadership, and visual arts thanks to her involvement with her local church. She is currently the founder of her own anti-trafficking initiative, The Omega Project.
Sarah has a focus on humanitarian work after a close friend of hers escaped from a local sex trafficking ring. Empowered by the opportunity to spread awareness about this issue, she completed governmental training before developing her curriculum for local and global communities. She has had the pleasure of speaking to tens of thousands, including political leaders, across various media channels, school boards, community groups, and more, helping raise tens of thousands of dollars for survivor care. Sarah believes in the importance of education and has a vision of creating a world where children, especially young girls, can grow up without fear for their safety within their relationships. She fell in love with educating others through an optimistic lens of hope and unity.
Although she loves educating others, she also focuses on learning and intrapersonal growth by developing her own skills and interests. From a young age, fitness has played an important role in Sarah’s life through her love of hiking and her interest in hockey. Most recently, she played for her university’s hockey team, but nowadays she spends her time developing her artistic skills through graphite and acrylic mediums. Her interest derives from her love of studying 20th-century artists from the post-impressionist movement, which has led her to organize charitable art auctions with local communities to raise funds for local and global initiatives.