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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Dr. Mclean and Passions

Dr. McLean is a senior lecturer and the developer of the International Nutrition Major in the Faculty of Food and Nutritional Health. She works with various international organizations, such as UNICEF and WHO, in seven countries in Africa and three in Asia. “At UBC my teaching focus is on global problems in nutrition and food security; analysis of the political, social and cultural complexities of food habits and malnutrition in various cultures around the world as well as the relationships between diet and disease in both the developed and developing world. I have also prepared nutrition curricula for Cambodia and Mongolia, and presented an introductory nutrition course in Rwanda with regionally specific content looking at food availability, related nutritional deficiencies, as well as the cultural and socioeconomic factors that impact on food security in each region. Most recently, I developed a new major, International Nutrition at UBC, which is the first of its kind in North America,” she says.

Her work takes a lifespan approach to ensure that during the “first 1000 days” (conception to two years of age) women are adequately nourished. The effects of malnutrition in the mother also extend to the children. Women who are undernourished starting from the womb see it affecting their cognitive and physical abilities, which may in turn project to potentially larger consequences on aspects of education, marrying early, and giving multiple births. She and her teams try to tackle issues from various angles, ensuring women during pregnancy are well nourished and children are also adequately nourished to enable them to reach their full potential in life.

Dr. Mclean and Changes

In the American Medical Journal, there was an article comparing female and male doctors and how female doctors work four hours more on average per day, due to household tasks and domestic work. We can celebrate that there are just as many doctors from each gender, but sometimes she feels that women are now too occupied. Perhaps a little balance is required back in our lives. And though a large focus has been on increasing educational opportunities for women, Dr. Mclean says there needs to be support for increasing access to land and jobs as well.

Dr. Mclean and Women

In 2006, there was a student, Amy Osborne, who went on to work abroad as a midwife with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders after taking Dr. McLean’s International Nutrition course. After witnessing an obstructed labor caused by early life nutrition and stunted growth, she wrote a poem about the horrid experiences and health consequences of the young girl in the conflict area. Motivated to gain the skills to perform the surgery that is necessary in such a case, she went on to enroll in a medical school to become a doctor. Recently, she has been back to the same conflict area to do just what she set out to do.

The women Dr. McLean sees while she is in the field, the women who work sixteen hour days in the rice fields or digging cassava roots, are also women of inspiration. She says that they lack opportunities to access education, health, and early life nutrition. Though they definitely need those doors opened, she also sees what women have in their lives that may be missing in our society today. She sees their connectedness to family, to the community, and to other women. Dr.McLean believes there are many valuable things to learn from women in other parts of the world.

Photo credit: Cicely Blain

Ryanne and Passions

Ryanne James is the First Nations House of Learning Outreach Coordinator and a student in the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning, specialising in Indigenous Community Planning. She is passionate about family, soccer, friendship, community, and gardening. In her spare time, she enjoys reading children’s books, playing soccer, and plotting on how to become the best 37-year-old break-dancer that this campus has ever seen.

She is passionate about people-issues and playing a role in a world where each individual, regardless of race, gender, culture, or background, has the right to education, work, nourishment, safety, physical, and mental health.

Ryanne and International Women’s Day

This International Women’s Day, Ryanne is celebrating her mother as well as many friends and family members. These are the women that inspire, support, and nurture her. “They are my mentors, they are my mentees, my friends, my peers, my elders, my family, and my lifelines in an often tumultuous but splendid life,” she says. Every day these women teach her what it means to be a woman and the importance of this role in our world. They inspire her to be brighter, think bigger, and treat the challenges that we all face as opportunities to effect positive change.

This International Women’s Day Ryanne is celebrating them all for the fights they make her have, the beauty the make her see, for believing in her and for listening to her. “I am so grateful for all of the strong, intelligent, thoughtful, expressive, and magical women in my life,” she says.

Ryanne lists the following friends and family members as very inspirational to her: her Mom, Shoshanna, Emmily, Constance, Debra, Danette, Amanda, Amanda, Shona, Veronica, Tasha, Jodi, Tine, Vivian, Tess, Vanessa, Ashley, Annie, Gina, Jessica, Jessica, Jessica, Amy, Katherine, Lisa, Robin, Leona, Meika, Loraine, Hazel, Normajean, Scarlett, Carolina, Aftab, Sashia, Steph, Marny, Tanja, Tara, and Erin.

Ryanne says she will continue to play a role in empowering young women to find their voices, take responsibility for their actions, and become strong, self-reliant, and confident.

Ryanne and Female Empowerment

To her, female empowerment means working with your entire community, all genders, races, and cultural identities, to create a space where each individual can be respected for who they are, who they would like to become, and the things that they have experienced in the past. She believes that female empowerment means that you take an active role in your community and work to ensure that the voices of your community members are being heard as much as your own voice.

Dr. Aoife Emily Heart is a lecturer in the English Department at the University of British Columbia, with research specializations in comparative literature, trans/gender theory, and human rights issues. She is interested in feminist philosophy, queer studies, transgender awareness, and education.

She is inspired by the multitude of women authors, poets, and scholars who wrote their lives against and despite whatever opposition tried to stop them.

She believes that the best form of activism is education. As such has adopted an ethics of honesty about herself and her experiences as a trans-woman who has lived on three different continents.

She is passionate about an intersectional, inclusive feminism that challenges the assumptions, prescriptions, and definitions of who women are and what we must be. She champions diversity not reduction, information not antagonism, and most of all dialogue and collaboration.