The Collective

Executive Staff

Amanda Reaume
Founder, Editor, Mother Superior

Amanda conceived of and founded Antigone Magazine in 2006. She is the volunteer executive director of the Antigone Foundation and was recently awarded the 2008 YWCA Young Woman of Distinction Award, an award which honours innovative and inspiring women from across the Lower Mainland.  Amanda also created the St. Anne’s Community Service Council and has been involved in YouthCo, Unicef UBC, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the BC Cancer Foundation. She participated as a delegate at the UN 52nd meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women. Amanda has an MA in Canadian Women’s Political Autobiography.

Kaitlin Blanchard
Associate Editor, WILLA President 09/10

Kaitlin is the Chair of the Antigone Foundation’s Board of Directors. Kaitlin helped to found both Antigone and WILLA in the hopes of creating a revived community for Vancouver Women’s advocates while working toward recasting feminism and feminists in a positive light.  She envisions Antigone’s publications as positive spaces of critical analysis and debate. Kaitlin was the recipient of an HSBC Emerging Leader Scholarship for 2008-09. Her current work focuses on the affective boundaries of the subject and the ethical promise of performance and theatre in the empathetic activism they undertake. While her heart lies with her writing, she believes fervently that scholarship and activism need not be mutually exclusive categories. She is a passionate poet and playwright and is currently completing an Honours BA in English Literature with the intention of obtaining a PhD.

Check out Kaitlin’s column The Feminist Scholar.

Emily Yakashiro
WILLA Secretary 09/10, Wellness Peer Educator - UBC Wellness Centre

Emily is interested in anti-violence work, specifically violence against women. She has been a volunteer for the SASC at UBC for almost 3 years, helping with various anti-violence initiatives such as The Clothesline Project and their “Got Consent?” campaign. She is interested in politics as a way to help make the world a better, safer place for all women. She is currently in progress of doing her BA, with a Major in Religion, Literature & the Arts, and a Minor in Political Science.

Raquel Baldwinson
WILLA Treasurer 09/10

Raquel is a writer for Antigone Magazine and the treasurer for WILLA. She is an Honours English student with an academic interest in examining sexism within popular non-fiction on the gender gap. She was previously the president of the UBC Young Conservatives and worked at the Conservative Party Headquarters in Ottawa. She has resigned from partisan politics and now focuses on making, in her own small way, anti-sexist pedagogy the norm.

Kelly E. Lau
Blog and Video Administrator

Kelly is interested in, and identifies with, issues pertaining to women of colour, women and technoculture and information societies. She has in the past been involved with Pride UBC and Pivot Legal Society.  In 2008, she helped bring Dreams for Women to the IMOW. In 2009, she participated in a community service project on behalf of the YWCA and Munroe House, in which she conducted courtroom observations for evidence of gender bias in the judicial system. Having obtained a BA in English and Women’s Studies, Kelly is currently a Joint MAS/MLIS candidate in Archival Studies and Library & Information Studies.

Check out Kelly’s bi-weekly Dreams for Women posts.

Contributors and Editorial Staff

Joanna Chiu
Youth Leader/Liaison, OXFAM Canada

Sunny Freeman
Contributing Editor, JournalismEthics.ca

Jillian Gordon
President, WILLA 07/08

Mira Hall
Community Outreach, Centre for Northern Families

Joaninha

Founder of Mandingueira

Aviva Levin
Co-Captain, Tickle Me Pickle Improv

Xenia Menzies
Co-Founder, WILLA

Kristen Myres
Co-Founder, WILLA

Megan Ryland

Author of  Beauty and the Beast: Ending the Love/Hate Relationship Between Girls and their Bodies

Kat Sorfleet
Co-President, STAND CANADA UBC Chapter

April Tam
Vice-President, UBC Women’s & Gender Studies Undergraduate Association