Introducing Sonali Verma

Sonali Verma is uniquely qualified to represent Ward 1, the ward with the largest number of young people in Toronto and home to the city's largest South Asian community.

Sonali helping serve Thanksgiving dinner at Kipling Collegiate

As a journalist for 10 years with Reuters, CNBC and Bloomberg News, Verma covered economic and public policy issues in cities as diverse as New Delhi, Singapore, Manila, London, Hong Kong and Toronto. This international experience has given her a rare perspective, having seen the best and worst ways to run a city.

She comes from a family dedicated to public service. Her father, Rajanikanta Verma, was India’s high commissioner to Canada from 1997 to 2002. The family has lived in Australia, the United States and across South Asia, where she learned about different values and traditions, and about tolerance.

Verma, 32, has an undergraduate degree in economics and a masters degree in political science from Delhi University, and speaks Hindi and Urdu. In India, she worked as a volunteer to help abused women complete their education. Verma has also worked in broadcasting with Moin Jamal, host of Band Baja Radio, a popular programme among Toronto’s South Asian community.
Verma lives in Ward 1’s historic Thistletown Village with her husband, Vikash Jain, their two young sons, and her mother-in-law. Until May, she was president of the local ratepayers association, the Thistletown Village Association. As a volunteer gardener, she has planted flowers in front of the local community centre and at the Islington-Albion crossing and vigorously campaigned for new trees to help beautify the neighbourhood.

Verma also sings as a soprano with the Harmony Singers, one of Toronto’s longest-running community choirs.

She has chosen to live here, rather than anywhere else in the world because she believes that Ward 1 has immense potential and that, together, we can make it Number One in beauty, safety and quality of life.