Gladys Osien

About Gladys Osien

Product regulatory law is the centre of Gladys Osien's practice, covering medical devices, cosmetics, natural health products, food and drugs. Gladys is an associate in the Ottawa office of Gowling WLG, working in the Business Law Group on its Advertising and Product Regulatory team, and serves clients in English and French. Much of the work is practical: checking a product's health claims against the science behind them, reviewing labels, and walking clients through the licensing and regulatory routes open to them.

Gladys came to law with a science background. An honours BSc in biology and pharmacology from McMaster University (2011) led to an MSc in experimental medicine at McGill University (2015), with research on measuring how safe drugs are and how well they deliver the health outcomes they're meant to. While at McGill's Centre of Genomics and Policy, Gladys co-authored a review in the European Journal of Human Genetics, published in 2016, setting out a decision tool for the ethics review of emerging genomic projects. That training still comes into play, particularly on files involving natural health products and cosmetics.

Law school followed at the University of Ottawa, where Gladys earned a JD in 2019 and wrote and researched at length on whether restricting cannabis advertising on social media is constitutional. Gladys was called to the Ontario bar in 2020. Gladys also writes about Health Canada changes, with firm articles co-authored on the 2024 consultation on health product shortages, the end of the Foreign Site Reference Number process, and a 2026 proposal to exempt some low-risk non-prescription drugs from the new drug requirements.

Gladys works to make the legal profession better reflect the people it serves. Since September 2021, Gladys has been the Black Mentor in Residence at the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, supporting Black law students and the Black Law Students' Association, and in September 2022 took on the added role of special advisor to the Dean on equity, diversity and inclusion. Gladys also co-hosts Gowling WLG's Diversonomics podcast, which looks at EDI initiatives across the legal industry. Growing up, Gladys lived in many countries, and has worked in settings ranging from international organizations to not-for-profits and academia.