2023 Speakers

  • Thandiwe Konguavi is a Canadian Church Press, Canadian Association of Black Journalists and RTDNA Canada award-winning journalist, born in Zimbabwe. She is a reporter/editor at CBC Edmonton. Reach her at thandiwe.konguavi@cbc.ca. Follow her on Twitter @cbcthandiwe.

  • Tamara Baluja (she/her) is the First Person producer for CBC News. She works with writers from across Canada to share their personal stories in their own words. Tamara has a decade of experience as a journalist and social media editor, and has previously worked with The Globe and Mail and CFRB 1010. She is co-writing Toronto Raptor Superfan Nav Bhatia's memoir, which will be published by Penguin Random House in spring 2024. She was born in India, has lived in the Middle East and England, and now calls Vancouver home. She can be reached at tamara.balua@cbc.ca.

  • Jeanie Mai Tran is the publisher of How Goes The Nation and an editor at The Resolve. She is Vietnamese and Chinese and a second-generation Canadian.

  • Sandra Hannebohm is a journalist, digital producer and owner of Twice As Good, a Black multimedia newsletter that helps you better engage with the news by slowing down. She also hosts and produces The Lion's Roar Podcast from Lion's Roar magazine.

  • Alicia Bell (they/she), Director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, came to this work as an extension of the work they’d been doing to create repair and restitution in our media systems. She brought relationships, insight as a strategist and community organizer, and a willingness to show up for and with a variety of partners across and adjacent to the journalism sector. They also brought with them their lived experiences as a Black, Queer, Non-Binary parent, elder caretaker, sibling to an incarcerated/formerly incarcerated sister, and land steward in Charlotte, NC.

  • Collette Watson is a musician, filmmaker and strategist hailing from the lowcountry of South Carolina and now based in South Phoenix, Arizona. A graduate of Howard University, she previously worked at Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) before joining Free Press, where she now serves as vice president of cultural strategy and director of the Media 2070: Media Reparations project. Collette is the co-founder of Black River Life creative studio, a community-driven hub for African Diaspora arts and information.

  • Desmond Cole is a journalist, activist and author based in Toronto. His work focuses on the struggle against state violence, particularly local policing. Desmond's work includes live broadcast radio, podcasts, local reporting, a newspaper column, magazine features, and consultation on a documentary film. His best-selling book, "The Skin We're In, A Year of Black Resistance and Power", won the 2020 Toronto Book Award and the OLA Evergreen Award.

  • Jan Wong is an award-winning Canadian journalist and author. She is the granddaughter of a Chinese railroad worker who in 1881 left Toisan 台山,China, to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway across the Rocky Mountains, and who became the 10th Chinese in Canada to become a citizen. More than 50 years ago, her father, Bill Wong, became the first restaurateur in Canada to offer the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

    In 1972, as a third-generation Montrealer, Jan Wong became the first Canadian to study in China during the Cultural Revolution. In 1989 as Beijing bureau chief for the Globe and Mail, she covered the massacre in Tiananmen Square. Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996, and remains banned in China.

  • Jackie Wong (she/her) is a senior editor with The Tyee, an online news magazine for B.C. She has previously worked in Vancouver's non-profit sector as a program manager and workshop facilitator specializing in racial equity issues, drug policy and homelessness. She has also worked as an instructor in UBC's Creative Writing Program, SFU's New Media Journalism program, and most recently in SFU's Semester in Dialogue program.

    Jackie's current role with The Tyee involves supervising and editing the work of staff writers, freelance contributors, and managing The Tyee's internship and journalism fellowship programs. Her editorial specialties include culture, urban issues and social justice.