From Teen Mom to Trailblazing Scholar

Prilly Bicknell-HerscoThe newspaper ad tucked in the back pages of a Toronto publication might have seemed too good to be true.

“Have you ever thought about attending the University of Toronto?” it asked. For Prilly Bicknell-Hersco, a young Jamaican-Canadian mother juggling a dead-end telemarketing job and raising two children at the time, the question seemed almost mocking. But that moment on a city bus, holding her son and reading those words, would become the catalyst for an extraordinary academic journey that has taken her from teenage motherhood to the precipice of earning a Ph.D.

Today, Bicknell-Hersco stands as a testament to the transformative power of educational access programs. Now in her third year of doctoral studies at York University, she has become a passionate advocate for Black disabled students in higher education, a population she describes as “very under-researched,” particularly in Canada. Her work focuses on what she calls “Black mother work critical disability studies,” examining how Black students with invisible or undiagnosed disabilities navigate institutional barriers in academic spaces.

The advertisement that caught Bicknell-Hersco’s attention promoted the University of Toronto’s Transitional Year Program (TYP), an access initiative founded in the 1970s by two Caribbean educators. Originally designed for Black students who lacked formal university requirements, the program has since expanded to serve other marginalized communities —people who, as Bicknell-Hersco puts it, “never finished high school, never had an opportunity to go to university.”

“I thought, well, I’ll give it a go,” she recalls of her decision to apply. She completed the application process and was accepted into the one-year access program that provides direct entry to Canada’s most prestigious research university.

The program proved transformative. After completing TYP, Bicknell-Hersco pursued a double major and minor in Caribbean studies, diaspora and transnational studies, and sociology. Her academic excellence—she graduated with distinction due to her high GPA—surprised even herself.

“I’ve always been passionate about education and specifically access to education,” she says, noting how the experience opened her eyes to systemic barriers facing non-traditional students.