Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Dr Assanand and Passions

Dr Sunaina Assanand is a faculty member with the Department of Psychology at UBC. She is interested in a wide array of disciplines, including gender, cultural, and personality psychology. She is particularly passionate about issues surrounding gender and the application of psychology to international development. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her family, most of who live in Vancouver after migrating from Uganda.

Dr Assanand and International Women’s Day

Dr Assanand is inspired by her mother, who worked for thirty years with battered women from immigrant and visible minority backgrounds. She worked around anti-violence and is a role model for pursuing equality and safety for women in Canada.

Dr Assanand is also celebrating her twelve year old daughter this International Women’s Day. She believes that having a young daughter has made her more aware of gender issues and has shown her what immense potential young girls have. “Every girl should have the opportunity to fulfil her potential,” she says.

Dr Assanand and Women’s Issues

She is very passionate about the rights of the girl child, particularly in an international context. She believes that every child should have the right to education, freedom from physical and sexual violence, and the ability to contribute to her community. She would like to see continued progress toward gender equality. Dr Assanand believes that the increased opportunities for women over the last fifty years have been very positive; however, there is still room for growth when it comes to equality between the sexes.

As an instructor, Dr Assanand would like to see more opportunities for students to commit to social change both locally and internationally. She believes that students should be able to recognise their own voice in contributing to social change. She hopes for an educational community in which individuals are not limited by sex, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other factor.

Professor Scott and Interests

Anne Scott loves to communicate, to learn, and she loves people. She wants to be a lifelong learner and feels that she can do this through being a teacher. Currently, she works as a translator and as a 12-month lecturer in the French section of the department of French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies. She teaches women’s writing in French literature and shares the efforts of women trying to express themselves from within the box in which they were imprisoned in due to the societal circumstances of their times. She teaches students to question everything, especially what we think is normal or natural and tries to stop them from thinking that they have a specific role because they are women or men.

Professor Scott and Inspirations

Professor Scott’s great-great-grandmother and her great-grandmother had degrees in agriculture, obtained government awards in the field, and ran their own businesses. They were persistent and headstrong. She has always admired women in her family who thought for themselves and did not wait for the environment to form their opinions for them.

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Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Woo and Interests

Woo Kim is a Student Development Officer at UBC. Woo is really passionate about people; they are the core of everything she does. She really enjoys the idea of ‘people development’. That is, helping people get better at what they love and creating a sense of self-awareness. “I hate people being mean and I love encouraging people to be great to one another,” she says. In her spare time, Woo loves hanging out with friends, cooking, finding awesome coffee shops, and reading great books. She is huge fan of fiction; she loves the worlds that authors create.

Woo and International Women’s Day

As a people-lover, Woo is celebrating many women this International Women’s Day. She lists her colleagues, her mum, and her friends as people who inspire her on a daily basis. Woo is a big part of UBC’s Student Leadership Conference and this year she was very inspired by Waneek Horn Miller who came across as a genuine, authentic and caring person. In Waneek, Woo sees some of herself; the kind of person always striving for more.

Woo and Passions

Woo is passionate about education and she believes that the more access to education you have, the more empowered you are; it helps you make good decisions and understand your rights. Woo also believes in, and strives for, equality in the work place, especially for women of colour and minorities, both visible and invisible. She would like to see increased female representation in leadership so that young women can have more great role models to look up to.

Woo and Changes

Woo believes that there are positive changes happening for women at the moment. “Social expectations for women are changing and both men and women are responsible for this,” she says. However, she recognizes that there is still some way to go. Globally, Woo would like to have more people in power making decisions that better represent everyone and take the whole population into consideration.

Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Tamara and Passions

Tamara Baldwin is the Associate Director for International Service Learning at the Centre for Community Engaged Learning. She earned her Master’s in Poverty Reduction Development Management at the University of Birmingham and received her Bachelors in Sociology at the University of Windsor. In her spare time, Tamara is at the playground with her children, at the library, or imagining herself in far off lands where grandiose adventures take place. She also loves learning and consuming world news via podcasts, and on-line courses. Tamara is passionate about breaking the “comfortable space where our thoughts and actions are on autopilot.” She loves engaging with group of individuals who are inspired and prepared to take action!

Tamara and Inspirations

Tamara’s 98 year old grandmother inspired her with her fiercely intelligent, quick to take action, and ready-to-laugh qualities. Tamara strives to follow her example on a daily basis. Ms. Miller, her supervisor during her time at McMaster University taught Tamara about the power of holding high expectations, communicating clearly, being principled, and never forgetting about the human inside the process. From her Tamara also learned about the critical balance of leading and managing. Lastly, Leah Asego, Tamara’s friend and colleague from Nairobi, who taught her entire career in government schools in an informal settlement. Leah demonstrated how staying true to values and beliefs that conflict with current systems and dominant schools of thought will not be the easiest path to take, but are some of the most important paths to follow.

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Role/position(s) at UBC: Executive Director at AMS Bike Co-op

What are you passionate about?

I am want to create a welcoming community where people can get involved with what they’re passionate about and help connects them with their community.

Who are the women in your life that inspired or inspire you?

There’s the obvious cheesy answer – female members of my family.  They taught me to look out for the people I care about and be a steady, stable, and completely committed person in everything I do.

Other women that inspire me are notable women in history – female artists from 60s and 70s when there was a lot of upheaval  in community. They shaped the way I look at the world.

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Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Stacey and Interests

Stacey Simpson is an International Student Coordinator, originally from Vancouver Island. Her job involves academic advising for international students and recruitment which she thoroughly enjoys as she has the opportunity to meet applicants from all over the world. In her spare time, Stacey likes to take Evolutionary Astrology night classes, travel, spend time with friends and sample food and wine.

Stacey is passionate about international education and bringing students to UBC from a variety of different countries as well as promoting exchange opportunities like Go Global. She believes in the idea of people sharing cultures and learning from each other. She believes that the promotion of cross cultural communication creates understanding between different groups.

Stacey and Healing

Stacey’s second job is running her own alternative healing therapy practise. She is passionate about wellness and the connection of emotions to spirituality and physical health. She loves making people feel better and wants people to be empowered in their own wellness. “Too much of our own health has been co-opted by corporations and so we expect others to be responsible for our health,” she says. In her practise, she gives people guidance on where to seek resources and promotes the ideas of tapping into personal resources, self-healing, good nutrition, and energy healing. A lot of her work involves helping battered women who have suffered domestic abuse or sexual assault. Stacey is also certified in the practice of Deep Memory Process which involves healing wounds from our current life as well as past lives.

Stacey loves travelling which she is fortunate enough to do as part of her job at UBC. Recreationally, she also uses her travelling to study healing practises in countries like Japan, Australia, USA and Thailand where she engages in fasting programs. She believes that travelling is a part of exploring your soul’s journey. Her degree in Sociology and Anthropology also benefit her on her travels as she loves to explore culture and society and engage in fashion, art, and language abroad.

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Deb Pickman has been a theatre creator, actor, producer and arts marketing specialist for two decades. She is a co-founding member of the theatre company Shameless Hussy Productions and has toured nationally and internationally for several companies including her own. Shameless Hussy pursues a mandate of “telling provocative stories about women to inspire the hand that rocks the cradle to rock the world.” A two-time Jessie Richardson nominee, Deb received the Vancouver Sun People’s Choice Award for her performance in the production of Susan Miller’s My Left Breast. Beginning with publicizing for the company, Deb later gained extensive experience in publicizing literary, visual, and performing artists as Director of Publicity and Development at Rebus Creative. Deb has a BA in Theatre from UBC and is currently Communications & Marketing Specialist for the UBC Department of Theatre and Film. More at www.shamelesshussy.com

What are you passionate about?

Getting women’s stories and voices heard in mainstream culture. Seeing art news front and centre in the media.

Who inspires you?

My mom and sister, my girlfriends. Grassroots campaigners for social justice and equality. Everyone who is working towards making the world a more loving place. So many people on the world stage – the latest is Jimmy Carter and his new book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.

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Tell us about yourself.

“I’m an assistant professor of English Literature at Corpus Christi College, the Catholic liberal arts college on UBC Campus. Both in UBC’s Coordinated Arts Program (where I taught previously) and at Corpus Christi, I have been concerned with educating students about marginalization and social justice issues facing women. In particular, I have focused on local contexts, teaching about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the kinds of trauma and marginalization sex trade workers have experienced and continue to experience in that community. Over the past three years, I have volunteered with two organizations on the DTES – Servantsand The Door is Open – and invited students to the DTES with me to engage interpersonally with members of that community. I also mentor students who want to become involved in local organizations that serve the marginalized communities in our city.”

Who are some of the women in your life that have inspired you?

“There are a number of women in my life who have inspired me. They have all been women who have invested themselves deeply in my life. The first is my mother, a quiet feminist who taught me that it never hurts to ask and not to take no for an answer. She also is and continues to be a mentor and role model for me in her work with marginalized women in her community. She has been involved in programs like Women for Women (supporting women through community building and assistance with material needs) and the Niagara Literacy Council, to help women gain language skills, life skills, and self-confidence. My mother also showed me that every person, no matter what background or context, deserves respect, attention, and kindness.

The second is Susanna Egan, who was my doctoral supervisor from 2004-2010. She showed me how to balance academic and family life. In particular, she showed me that one’s identity as a woman is not rooted in a single role or responsibility. As multifaceted beings, we find our fulfillment in pursuing all dimensions of ourselves, not just work-related, academic dimensions. At the same time, however, she pushed me to be the best academic I could be. She pushed me to seriously engage with my work while supporting me as a person. She has taught me how to be a mentor to students, encouraging both their academic excellence and personal development.

Finally, my spiritual director, Irene Gifford-Cole, has inspired me to think outside the box, to challenge my stereotypes, to open myself to experiences, people, and ideas outside my comfort zone, and to be content with who I am. For these amazing women, I am truly grateful.”

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