Team
Our Guide Team
Our Guide Team works collaboratively to support Pathways participants and each other. All of our team have practices deeply rooted in the communities they serve across many disciplines and geographic locations.
Yun-Jou Chang – Program Guide is a writer, facilitator, cultural producer, and arts administrator. Rooted in grassroots organizing, Yun-Jou situates her work at the intersection of art and community and is deeply drawn to language, the stories that we tell, and how they inform our ability to connect with one another, form groups, and build community.
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Sidi Chen – Program Guide is a traveling queer artist whose relational practice addresses the intersectionality of the body, community space, and the land. For the creative process, Chen empathizes the body as a unit of measurement, a vessel of relationships, a repository of experience, and an instrument for creativity. Read More
Allison Girvan- Program Guide is an internationally respected Canadian singer and choral director known for her exploration of songs spanning genre, style and language. She has been a featured soloist in performance and on recordings with ensembles ranging from jazz trios to full orchestra and is a studio vocalist for T.V. and feature film. Read More
Kia Kadiri- Program Guide is a respected vocalist and workshop facilitator based in Vancouver. For over 20 years her unique style keeps her in demand as a performer, instructor, and recording artist. Kia teaches lyricism and songwriting in marginalized communities, schools, and institutions. Her interactive workshops combine music theory, improvisation, recording techniques, music production, creative writing, and performance skills. Read More
Kingsley Strudwick – Program Guide
Kingsley Strudwick, BSc, been a trainer and facilitator for over fifteen years, exploring topics such as gender diversity, microaggressions, intersectionality, bystander intervention, and systemic changes in workplace culture.Read More
Bethany Handfield – Program Guide
Bethany Handfield is a painter, assemblage sculptor, dollmaker, and miniaturist who loves to share her craft through teaching and mentorship. She believes “a healthy community is a creative and connected community. Read More
Nate Gerber – Program Guide
Nate Gerber (he/they) is the Director of Strategy, Systems, and Design at Voice of Purpose, where he co-pilots initiatives to build leadership and capacity among arts educators, administrators, and executives. Nate’s design perspective is shaped by his artistic pursuits in music composition, kinetic sculpture, and dance choreography. Read More
Jenna Reid – Program Guide
Jenna Reid is the current Artistic Director of Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture. In 2019 Jenna completed her PhD in Critical Disability Studies at York University and has taught and done research at Toronto Metropolitian University, York University, University of Toronto, and McMaster University. Jenna’s research and studio practice focus on artistic production as a site of critical inquiry, community organizing, and political activism.
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Amber Santos – Program Guide
Amber Santos is an artist, art educator and curator.
In her art practice she explores themes of identity, land and belonging, drawing on her experience as a German Canadian and Anishanaabe and Metis person. She explores what it means to be rooted and uprooted as a third generation immigrant and an indigenous person reclaiming and practicing culture, while raising a family. Read More
Veronica Buck – Program Guide
A Community Connector and Collaborator in the small and big spaces, I’ve facilitated learning, created pathways for looking at leadership with a different lens, and collaborated on community development and engagement projects at various levels of government, non-profits, as well as private organizations. Read More
Kenji Maeda – Program Guide
Photo credit – Ervin Wong, CBC
Kenji’s (he/him) experiences are diverse and grounded in his passion for the arts, education and building community, and influenced by his Uchinanchu heritage. Based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, he is the Executive Director of the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, Project Director for the Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts, and an arts and culture consultant.Read More
Our Program Advisors
Meeka Noelle Morgan – Program Advisor
Meeka Noelle Morgan is Secwepemc and Nuu-Chah-Nulth woman from the interior of what is now known as BC and Vancouver Island. She is a singer/songwriter, writer, workshop designer, facilitator, and has developed many Indigenous arts projects, many involving youth. Read More
Phoenix | Sun Park – Program Advisor
Phoenix a.k.a Sun Park is the Founder of Voice of Purpose. Sun has been a leader in community arts as an artist-educator and organizer since 2005. Phoenix is also the Integration Director and sits on the Board of Directors at Interfusion Festival.Read More
Regan Shrumm – Program Advisor
Regan Shrumm is a queer and disabled artist, curator, and administrator currently based on the traditional and unceded lands of the Lekwungen and W̱ SÁNE peoples (currently Victoria, BC). Born on the traditional territory of the Haudensaunee and Anishaabeg (Hamilton, ON), they grew up moving around the West and East Coasts of the United States. Read More
Our Program Director
Carla Stephenson- Program Director Carla’s work sits at the intersection of arts, systems change, rural innovation and amplification. She is the founder of the Rural Arts Inclusion Lab and the Executive Director of Renascence, a non-profit society in Ymir BC. She and her husband of 27 years, Shawn, founded the Tiny Lights Festival. Carla is a member of the Arts BC Insight team and an alumna of the Positive Deviants Fellowship. She has presented at the Canadian Arts Summit and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation Conference, sharing the innovations her organizations have made in equity and sustainability.
Carla’s facilitation work is grounded in creating conditions where emergence can happen through listening and collective story harvesting. She believes art plays a vital role in disrupting and getting to the truth of issues in subversive and overt ways. Carla brings to her work the lived experience of being a mixed-race woman of colour and mother who is grateful to live and work on the unceded and stolen land of the Sinixt (sńʕaýckstx ).
Past Pathways Team Members
Jazmin Hundal – Past Program Advisor (she/her)
Jazmin is a South Asian woman who lives on the stolen lands of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples. She currently works as Outreach Coordinator for the BC Museums Association, where she runs the IBPOC Network. Jazmin is passionate about creating support systems for racialized workers in the cultural field. If you would like to get in touch or get involved in the IBPOC Network, please reach out to her at [email protected].
Chelsey McRory – Past Program Guide
As a Black Canadian woman of Jamaican and Malawian descent and someone living with an invisible (dis)ability, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion + Belonging are not just jobs or career paths for Chelsey they are her life’s passion. Guided by these principles she established Inclusion Sanctuary Consulting. Read More
Dr. Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra (Sharn) – Past Program Advisor
Sharn is a Historian and founder of Belonging Matters Consulting. Sharn worked as Coordinator at the South Asian Studies Institute at UFV for more than 12 years and as co-curator and co-manager of the Sikh Heritage Museum, National Historic Site and Gur Sikh Temple (gurdwara). Read More
Leadership Team
The Pathways program is a collaborative effort between Arts BC, the BC Museums Association (BCMA), the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance (GVPTA), and the Rural Arts Inclusion Lab (RAIL). This group works in a trust-based co-leadership model.
Interested in getting involved?
Please reach out to us at [email protected].
