Kennedy Antoniuk, hailing from Smoky Lake, Alberta, is a third-year student at the Pacific University College of Optometry and the current president of this Pacific Northwest chapter of CAOS. Under her leadership, CAOS has flourished at Pacific, as has general interest in advocacy in Canadian optometry. This year, Kennedy worked hard aiming to set a record year for attendance at the annual BC Doctors of Optometry conference that took place in Vancouver, BC. As a firm believer in advocacy and the advancement of the profession, Kennedy is also the Pacific liaison to the AAO, and is also the Class of 2019 equipment rep. She is also committed to supporting her classmates, and is a teaching assistant for three lab sections for the first-year Ocular Diseases class at Pacific.
Despite juggling the immense workload of an optometry student with the added responsibilities of her assumed roles, Kennedy never fails to find time for her hobbies and passions. Of these passions, the great is undoubtably pho, or Vietnamese soup noodles; She also loves her cats, dogs, and horses back home in Alberta, and longs for the day when school can longer separate her from them. Kennedy enjoys accumulating copious gains at the gym and is an avid volleyball player, having played both in competitively in her undergrad and against unsuspecting first-year optometry students in intramurals at Pacific.
As her optometric interests have matured, Kennedy has become a keen pupil in the field of specialty contact lenses, and is currently contributing to a major study on scleral lenses. After passing the big, bad, Boards, and getting through externships, she hopes to work in a private practice setting where she has the freedom and capacity to dispense specialty contact lenses, especially ortho-keratology lenses. Of course, that day will be a sad day at Pacific, as it will mean one of the shining stars will no longer be seen roaming these Forest Grove halls.