Simon Fraser University Vancity Office of Community Engagement

David Chang is a teacher educator, and PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. He researches contemplative approaches to environmental education. David Chang lives in Vancouver.

Russell Wallace is an award-winning composer, producer and traditional singer from the Lil’wat Nation. His music can be heard on soundtracks for film, television and theatre/dance productions across Canada and the USA. Wallace is one of the founding members of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and is an alumnus of the UBC Creative Writing program. Wallace has written poetry, short fiction, theatre, and music theatre. Wallace was the artist in residence at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in 2019, a guest programmer for Word Vancouver and was the artistic director for the Aboriginal Electronic Music Festival for a number of years.

Adam Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. His practice attempts to subvert traditional forms of ethnography through humor, relation, and transgression. Khalil’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Film Festival, Walker Arts Center, Lincoln Center, Tate Modern, Toronto Biennial and Whitney Biennial, among other institutions. Khalil is a core contributor to New Red Order (NRO) and a co-founder of COUSINS Collective. Khalil is the recipient of various fellowships and grants, including but not limited to: Sundance Art of Nonfiction, Jerome Artist Fellowship, and Gates Millennium Scholarship. Khalil received his BA from Bard College.

Zack Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His work often explores an indigenous worldview and undermines traditional forms of historical authority through the excavation of alternative histories and the use of innovative documentary forms. He recently completed a B.A. at Bard College in the Film and Electronic Arts Department and is a UnionDocs Collaborative Fellow and Gates Millennium Scholar.

Jackson Polys is a visual artist who seeks to dissolve artificial boundaries between perceptions of traditional Native art forms, practices, and contemporary life, and whose practice reflects an inquiry into the limits and viability of desires for indigenous growth. Prior to pursuing his undergraduate education in New York he worked as Alaska-based artist Stron Softi, with solo exhibitions at the Alaska State Museum and the Anchorage Museum, and has been engaged by museums seeking replacements for repatriated works. He obtained a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Columbia University (2013) and holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2015). He is the recipient of a 2017 NACF Mentor Artist Fellowship and Advisor to Indigenous New York, the collaborative program initiative co-founded by Mohawk artist Alan Michelson and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Charmaine works closely with Canada’s seven designated Changemaker campuses and their change leaders to deepen and accelerate field-level collaboration and transformation in Canadian post-secondary. In this role, Charmaine is leading Ashoka Canada’s targeted efforts to build upon growing momentum for social impact work in Canadian higher ed by identifying and accompanying prospective Canadian campuses through the designation process. Charmaine draws from over 15 years’ experience advancing equity, diversity, social accountability, and decolonization as drivers of post-secondary institutional change. Prior to joining Ashoka, Charmaine was Senior Director of the Office of Community Engagement at Concordia University in Montreal, where she also served as a Special Advisor to the Provost on Indigenous Directions, and stewarded the launch of the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation. Charmaine also previously directed recruitment and admissions to McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Law. Born in Jamaica and raised in Tio’ tia:ke (Montreal), where she currently resides, Charmaine is a first-generation university attendee and lawyer by training. She holds a BA in English Literature and BCL (Civil Law) and LL.B. (common law) degrees from McGill University. She speaks English and French.

My research crosses disciplinary and national boundaries to explore policy decisions made about transportation, cities and the environment. I have published in dozens of scholarly journals, including Energy Policy, Transport Policy, Transportation Research, Journal of Transport Geography, World Transport Policy and Practice, Journal of Air Transport Management, Transportation Research Record, Journal of Public Policy, Canadian Public Policy, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Journal of Urban Technology, Canadian Journal of Political Science and Scientific American. My work has been awarded prizes for outstanding papers presented at the World Conference on Transport Research and the Canadian Transportation Research Forum. 

I have advised governments in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France and the United States on transportation and environmental research and policy development. I served on the board of VIA Rail, Canada’s national passenger railway. I have chaired the Rail Group of the U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB), a division of the National Academies of Science, Medicine and Engineering. I am currently a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and Adjunct Professor of Urban Studies at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Closer to home, I sit on the Vancouver City Planning Commission.

My name is Charlie Demers — I’m a Juno-nominated comedian and I’m a BC Book Prize -nominated author, and my voice features prominently on your parents’ favourite public radio show & your child’s favourite Netflix cartoon (so long as your parents listen to CBC’s The Debaters and your kid watches either of the Emmy-winning programs Beat Bugs or The Last Kids on Earth). I’ve led an idiosyncratic life that has included, among other things, membership in a communist sect; opening, on various occasions, for Sarah Silverman, Marc Maron, Hannibal Buress, Bob Odenkirk & David Cross; organizing a union at a video arcade; making a cooking show pilot with my mother-in-law; writing jokes with Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall; introducing Noam Chomsky at an anti-war rally of more than fifteen thousand people at Vancouver’s Sunset Beach; sharing a bill talking about anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder along with Stanley Cup finalist Kelly Hrudey & his daughter; learning a Cantopop love song for my wedding banquet; and, most recently, going to seminary.

My name is Charlie Demers — I’m a Juno-nominated comedian and I’m a BC Book Prize -nominated author, and my voice features prominently on your parents’ favourite public radio show & your child’s favourite Netflix cartoon (so long as your parents listen to CBC’s The Debaters and your kid watches either of the Emmy-winning programs Beat Bugs or The Last Kids on Earth). I’ve led an idiosyncratic life that has included, among other things, membership in a communist sect; opening, on various occasions, for Sarah Silverman, Marc Maron, Hannibal Buress, Bob Odenkirk & David Cross; organizing a union at a video arcade; making a cooking show pilot with my mother-in-law; writing jokes with Dave Foley of The Kids in the Hall; introducing Noam Chomsky at an anti-war rally of more than fifteen thousand people at Vancouver’s Sunset Beach; sharing a bill talking about anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder along with Stanley Cup finalist Kelly Hrudey & his daughter; learning a Cantopop love song for my wedding banquet; and, most recently, going to seminary.

David Eby is the provincial government representative  (MLA) for Vancouver-Point Grey, first elected in 2013.

A proud local resident, David was re-elected in 2020 to serve a third term in the B.C. Legislature and in November 2020 was appointed to his current role as Attorney General and Minister of Housing by Premier John Horgan.

Before he was elected, David was the Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, an adjunct professor of law at the University of British Columbia, president of the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and served on the Vancouver Foundation’s Health and Social Development Committee.

An award-winning human rights lawyer, he has been repeatedly recognized in local media as one of British Columbia’s most effective advocates and has appeared at all levels of court in BC.

His years of legal advocacy at Pivot Legal Society to protect the human rights and dignity of homeless and under-housed residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside were recognized in 2011 by the UN Association in Canada and the B.C. Human Rights Coalition with their annual award.

David is the author of several books and articles on legal rights. His handbook on arrest rights is now in its third printing, with more than 10,000 copies in circulation.

David Eby is the provincial government representative  (MLA) for Vancouver-Point Grey, first elected in 2013.

A proud local resident, David was re-elected in 2020 to serve a third term in the B.C. Legislature and in November 2020 was appointed to his current role as Attorney General and Minister of Housing by Premier John Horgan.

Before he was elected, David was the Executive Director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, an adjunct professor of law at the University of British Columbia, president of the HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and served on the Vancouver Foundation’s Health and Social Development Committee.

An award-winning human rights lawyer, he has been repeatedly recognized in local media as one of British Columbia’s most effective advocates and has appeared at all levels of court in BC.

His years of legal advocacy at Pivot Legal Society to protect the human rights and dignity of homeless and under-housed residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside were recognized in 2011 by the UN Association in Canada and the B.C. Human Rights Coalition with their annual award.

David is the author of several books and articles on legal rights. His handbook on arrest rights is now in its third printing, with more than 10,000 copies in circulation.

Angela Kaida is an epidemiologist based in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Global Perspectives in HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health. She has been learning from and working with women living with HIV for the past 10 years. Angela’s research focuses on the sexual and reproductive health priorities of women living with HIV, including sexuality, safer conception, contraceptive access, reproductive decision-making, healthy pregnancy, and postpartum well-being. Her work investigates the social and structural factors that limit women’s realization of fulfilling sexual and reproductive lives, including laws that criminalize HIV non-disclosure. Angela’s research program adopts a community-informed, rights-driven, and evidenced-based approach to sexual and reproductive health by, with, and for women affected by HIV. She emigrated to Canada from Kenya as a child and today, her research program involves thousands of women living with or affected by HIV in East Africa, South Africa, and Canada.