ABOUT THIS EVENT
In collaboration with the BCIT Student Association, BCIT Respect, Diversity, and Inclusion Office, BCIT Pride Committee, and BCIT Faculty & Staff Association we are hosting an online Pride 2020 Panel.
Vancouver Pride Week, the last week of July, will be mainly online this year and has a great series of events and opportunities for learning, sharing, and celebrating. What are some of the stories of Pride, past and present? What does Pride mean to people? We are inviting the entire BCIT community to join us for a panel and moderated discussion.
You can find additional BCIT Pride-committee related resources here.
Register here!
This free event for the BCIT community will take place online with ASL provided. Unfortunately we will not be able to use live captioning in our online platform but will add captioning to the recording after the event. Please let us know if you have any needs in order to attend.
Panelists
Orene Askew (She/Her)
BCIT Alumnus (Broadcast) and member of the Squamish Nation. Coming from a diverse background, Orene Askew, aka DJ O Show, is driven by her passion. She is Afro-Canadian and First Nations and a proud member of the Squamish Nation. Feeling as though she stood out in a unique way, she has embraced both her cultural backgrounds and incorporates the teachings she has learned into everything she does.
She is an elected member and Spokesperson for the Squamish Nation Chief & Council. O Show has DJ’d the red carpet for WE Day Vancouver and was voted the official DJ for YES in Ottawa since 2012 and the official DJ for Gathering Our Voices for five years. She is the recipient of the 2015 Indigenous Business Award and 2018 Stand Out Award from the Vancouver Pride Society.
Karl Chen (He/They)
Karl, the recipient of the 2019 LOUD Pride Youth Scholarship, is an event planner, community builder, and activist recognized for his work advancing LGBTQIA2+ lives and commitment to social justice and queer liberation.
As the founder of Subtle Asian Networking -a space of 52,000+ members sharing their experiences as racialized individuals in professional settings and uplift each other through dialogue and mentorship- Karl has cultivated a network that recognizes a range of identities and has informed the need to advocate for BIPOC representation in the larger queer community.
A BCIT alumnus and Event Specialist in the BCIT Marketing & Communications team, Karl continues to be actively engaged and in BCIT’s pride community. Karl has been part of the BCIT Pride Committee, BCIT Respect, Diversity, and Inclusion committee, and even hosted the first ever drag show on campus.
Navigating life as a person with many intersecting identities, Karl’s goal is to uplift as many disenfranchised populations as possible and believes in change through education and action.
Danny Ramadan (He/Him)
Danny Ramadan is an award-winning Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker and LGBTQ-refugees activist.
The Clothesline Swing, Ramadan’s debut novel, won the Independent Publisher Book Award for LGBT Fiction, The Canadian Authors Association’s award for Best Fiction, and was shortlisted for Evergreen Award, Sunburst Award and a Lambda Award. It was long listed for Canada Reads 2018. The novel is translated to French, German and Hebrew.
His children book, Salma the Syrian Chef, is released in March 2020 by Annick Press. He is currently working on his next novel, The Foghorn Echoes, a collection of short fiction, The Syrian Survival Notebook, and a YA novel, Son of the Silk Maker.
He was named among the Top Immigrants to Canada 2017 as well as awarded the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Award for Excellency. He is currently finishing his Masters in Fine Arts – Creative Writing at UBC and lives with his husband, Matthew Ramadan, in Vancouver. Ramadan was selected as the Writer in Residence for the Saskatoon Public Library between September 2020 and May 2021.
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