Meet our speakers

Rayanne Banaga is a community counsellor and educator with a background working extensively with black and racialized communities in anti-oppressive education, youth empowerment, community mental health, and community based research. She believes in a collaborative approach to learning, healing, and caring for one another and uses transformative and restorative frameworks to reflect this in her work.  

Rayanne considers herself to be rooted in a commitment of accountability to the needs of her community and is deeply interested in imagining and building a world that centers on the self determination and ultimate liberation of marginalized communities.  

Gilene Graham is 4th year Political Science and Communication Studies Student at Wilfrid Laurier University where she serves as an Undergraduate Research Assistant in the Black Scholars of Laurier Project, the President of the Laurier Black Student Association, and Vice-President of Marketing for the Laurier Communications Student Association. 

In her research, Gilene focuses on the presence of Black individuals in academia at Laurier from 1911-2024. As President of the Black Student Association, she acts as the main representative for Black Students on Laurier’s Waterloo Campus and collaborates with staff from the Laurier EDI Department and Dean of Students’ Office to ensure the the enhancement of the learning experience for Black Students. She also sat on the Advisory Committee for this year’s Scarborough Charter Forum as a Community Engagement Chair, and looks forward to continuing inclusion-based work for equity-deserving communities as she enters her post-grad career path in the Sports/Entertainment industry.

Throughout her degree, she has actively engaged in strong leadership, strategic planning, and community building experiences through her academic, professional, and extracurricular involvement both on and off Laurier campus. Her diverse experiences showcase her commitment to social equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Jermal Alleyne Jones is the Associate Director, EDIA Library at the University of Waterloo and co-founder of Next Gen Men (NGM), a team of staff and volunteers empowering boys (and men) to change the way they see, think, and act about masculinity. He is also second-year PhD student in the Recreation and Leisure Aging, Health, and Wellbeing program. He studies the intersections between race (Black), ethnicity, gender (men), and ag(e)ing from an interdisciplinary lens.    

Dr. Naila Keleta-Mae is a Dorothy Killam Fellow, Canada Research Chair, Royal Society of Canada College Member, Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo and multi-disciplinary artist. She is the Principal Investigator of Black And Free, a research-creation project that brings together artists, academics, students and the general public through multi-year research partnerships with private and public sector organizations.

Keleta-Mae has authored the books Beyoncé and Beyond: 2013-2016 (Routledge UK) and Performing Female Blackness (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) and she is Co-Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Theatre Research In Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada. Her music albums are Fire Woman, Bloom and Free Dome: South Africa; her plays are What We Deserve, No Knowledge College and stuck and she has performed in Canada, France, Jamaica and South Africa. Keleta-Mae has also commentated for media outlets including the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, Business News Network, CTV, The Canadian Press, The National Post, The Fader, Today’s Parent and the British Broadcast Corporation.  

Dr. Laura Mae Lindo (she/her/elle) is a respected activist and educator who holds both a Masters and PhD in Education. Dr. Lindo is a knowledgeable advocate for the rights of womxn and girls, a respected ally to vulnerable communities, and, most importantly, a courageous public speaker, ready, willing, and able to speak to issues often left unaddressed. Her research includes an exploration of the use of humour to initiate discussions of race and racism in pre-service classrooms. A former Member of Provincial Parliament for Kitchener Centre and Ontario’s Official Opposition Critic for Anti-Racism and Equity as well as Colleges and Universities, Dr. Lindo was the inaugural Chair of Ontario’s first Black Caucus. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario) and Founder and Director of the e(RACE)r Institute where she continues to put anti-racist theory into practice.  

Shama Saleh holds a B.Sc. in Health Studies with a minor in Political Science from the University of Waterloo. Her academic foundation has nurtured a strong passion for community development, community-building, and advocacy. Her diverse experiences include involvement in health research projects focused on marginalized women, serving on a local newspaper board to shed light on diverse narratives, and acting as a Community Engagement Coordinator at the Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council. She particularly takes pride in her work co-founding Project UP, a non-profit organization dedicated to addressing systemic barriers faced by Black Muslim girls and women in the Kitchener-Waterloo Region. Shama's professional journey has afforded her opportunities to collaborate with marginalized groups, both locally and internationally. These experiences have significantly shaped her worldview and informed her understanding of her role within it. As she continues to work with and alongside her community in all her pursuits, Shama is guided by the profound insight of Kwame Ture: "An organization claiming to speak for the needs of a community must express itself in the tone of that community.” 

Dr Paul Ugor is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of Modern African Literatures and Cultures, Anglophone Postcolonial World Literatures, Cultural Studies, Global Black Studies, and New Media Cultures in the Global South.

He is the author of Nollywood: Popular Culture and Narratives of Youth Struggles in Nigeria (2016) and co-editor of several collections including, Youth and Popular Culture in Africa: Media, Music, and Politics (2021); African Youth Cultures in the Age of Globalization: Challenges, Agency, and Resistance (2017); Special Issue of Critical African Studies on ‘African Youth, Popular Culture, and the Ethnographic Sense’ (2023); Postcolonial Text, Vol. 8, No. 3 & 4, 2013; and a special issue of Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies 31:4 (2009). 

Ciann Wilson has over a decade experience working within racialized and Indigenous communities across Canada, first as a youth programmer and advocate in Toronto, and now as a community health researcher doing work across the country. Given glaring health disparities, her body of work as an award-winning scholar aims to utilize research, education, and evaluation as avenues for sharing the realities of Black, Indigenous and racialized communities for the improvement of the health and wellbeing of our communities.