Meet the Anti-Racism
Data Committee

June Francis LLB, PhD

Committee chair, Co-founder, Co-Laboratorio (CoLab Advantage Ltd.) and Director of the Institute for Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement, Cofounder of the Black Caucus at SFU and a Professor in the Beedie School of Business at SFU

Francis is an advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion for racialized groups. She is chair of the Hogan’s Alley Society, whose mission is to advance the social, political, economic and cultural well-being of people of African descent through the delivery of housing, built spaces and programming. She is also director of SFU’s Institute for the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement, whose mandate is to strengthen the links between scholarly research, policy and practice related to multicultural and diaspora communities and their role in building innovative, sustainable and inclusive initiatives. Her research focuses on the intersection between racism and the academy and markets and marketing, diversity, inter-culturality, leadership and participatory engagement approaches and community impact, Covid-19 with vulnerable and excluded groups as well as the advancement of non-traditional intellectual property law, including traditional knowledge related to community well-being and cultural and human rights.

Shirley Chau, BSW, MSW, PhD (UofT)

Associate professor, school of social work, UBC Okanagan

Chau lives and works as a settler on the ancestral, traditional and currently occupied lands of the Syilx Okanagan people, who are residents and stewards of these lands since time immemorial. Chau was co-chair of the University of British Columbia (UBC) President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence (2021-2022) and a former chair and co-chair of the Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Issues Caucus of the Canadian Association of Social Work Education (CASWE-ACFTS).

She serves on the United Against Discrimination Coalition Committee in Kelowna, where her focus is to monitor and find solutions to issues related to discrimination and hate, and intersectional discrimination based on Indigeneity, gender, sexual identity, religion, age, racial-linguistic, ethnicity and other identities and factors in the Thompson Okanagan region of B.C.

Donald Corrigal

Métis citizen and Environmental Public Health professional

Don has had a diverse and fulfilling career, reflecting his dedication to environmental public health, Indigenous cultural safety and athletic excellence.

From ensuring environmental public health practices to developing cultural health and safety curriculum for health-care professionals, Don has focused on fostering a safe and healthy environment in which communities can thrive. Don is currently focused on policy development, Indigenous cultural health, wellness and safety curriculum for health-care professionals in their interactions with Métis, First Nations and Inuit communities in B.C. Don also teaches Indigenous cultural health, safety and wellness to health-care professionals.

Don was also a high-performance athlete, competing nationally and internationally with global recognition in martial arts. He is an internationally certified master instructor in karate and holds the designation of registered professional coach with the Coaching Association of Canada in judo, soccer and Aboriginal sports. Don is nationally certified by Judo Canada as a self-defence instructor and teaches situational awareness and personal safety to community groups representing vulnerable populations, reflecting his commitment to promoting safety and awareness through martial arts.

Don’s commitment to public service extends to his current involvement as a member of the inaugural advisory committee under the provincial Anti-Racism Data Act, where he has contributed to shaping policies to combat systemic and structural racism.

Marion Erickson

Research manager, Health Arts Research Centre

Erickson is a Dakelh woman from the community of Nak’azdli and is a member of the Lhts’umusyoo (Beaver) Clan. Erickson also is a master of education candidate at Thompson Rivers University and earned a bachelor of public administration and community development from the University of Northern B.C. Erickson is currently serving on the B.C. Health Regulators Indigenous Student Advisory Group and has served on the trust development committee for the Nak’azdli Band and the City of Prince George Student Needs Committee.

Daljit Gill-Badesha

Executive Director, SACH and Instructor, SFU

With more than 25 years of senior leadership in the non-profit and public sectors, Gill-Badesha brings expertise in executive management, research, knowledge mobilization, and policy development for children and youth, seniors, immigrant and refugee settlement, and accessibility and inclusion portfolios. She has developed award-winning, large-scale initiatives and strategies for long-term community planning and led changes in policies to make data collection and reporting more accessible within local government and add accountability measures on data related to racism and hate.

Jessica (t’łisala) Guss

Leader of strategic initiatives in Indigenous Health for Health Quality BC

Guss has over 20 years of experience in business administration and management, with a focus on Indigenous health and wellness for the past 10 years. She is of mixed ancestry, including the Haida, Xaxli’p, Xwisten and Squamish Nations, as well as mixed European descent. Guss’s work has honed her skills in policy, standards, process development, and analysis, particularly in advancing Indigenous specific anti-racism strategies and objectives. Her traditional name is t’łisala (Kwak\’wala, for ‘brings light to others’). She excels in evaluating cultural safety initiatives and aligning data documentation with provincial measures, with a strong passion for Indigenous data sovereignty. 

Ellen Kim

Equity and inclusion consultant

Kim is a settler of Korean ancestry living on the unceded, traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Peoples. She is an equity and inclusion consultant and has worked with governments, businesses, universities and non-profit organizations with a focus on racial equity and justice. Prior to this, she was a frontline community worker for ten years, working primarily with people marginalized by housing insecurity and homelessness, poverty, colonization and war.

Kim co-leads a grassroots collective that collects, analyzes, tracks and shares community-sourced data on anti-Asian racism and its impacts. They have documented its rise across the country and have worked to shift the national discourse on the invisibility and denial of anti-Asian racism.

Zareen Naqvi

Director, Institutional Research and Planning, Simon Fraser University

Naqvi completed her PhD in economics at Boston University and worked as an academic and international development professional at the World Bank. She leads the equity, diversity and inclusion data working group at SFU and co-chairs the data governance council and other related projects. She is passionate about improving data access to ensure vulnerable groups are well represented in public services and higher education.

Smith Oduro-Marfo

Lead author and researcher, Black in B.C. report

Oduro-Marfo holds a PhD in political science from the University of Victoria. His area of academic interest since 2016 has been in issues of privacy, data protection, surveillance and identification systems. He is the lead author and researcher for the Black in B.C. report funded by the B.C. government and released in February 2022. He has been on the advisory committee for Ending Violence Association of B.C.’s anti-racism and hate response program and is a member of the Greater Victoria Police Diversity Advisory Committee.

Jacqueline Quinless

PhD, Data Justice Advocate, Quintessential Research Group 

A public sociologist and BIPOC researcher, Jacqueline is a biracial person of Indian ethnicity (Secunderbhad/Hyderbhad) and Irish/British ancestry living on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Lekwungen speaking peoples, Wsanec and Esquimalt Nations on Vancouver Island with her children.  

Jacqueline holds a PhD in Sociology with a focus on the health, inequality, anti-racism, intersectionality, decolonizing data, applied statistics and gender from the University of Victoria. Jacqueline spent 10 years working for Statistics Canada in the Gathering Strength Initiative and has taught data analysis extensively in Indigenous communities across Canada and Inuit Nunangat for two decades. 

She has worked extensively in Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities for more than 20 years using gender-based analysis (GBA+) frameworks. In 2013, she was recognized by the Canadian Sociological Association and the Angus Reid Foundation for her community-based research that has advanced human welfare for Indigenous Peoples in Canada.  

Jacqueline also completed a data fellowship during her postdoctoral work with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in Washington, DC, and the University of Victoria where she focused on research data management practices, ethics and data curation. She is an adjunct professor in Sociology, and an associate faculty at the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community Engagement (CIRCLE), at the University of Victoria. She enjoys teaching undergraduate and graduate course at the University of Victoria and Camosun College on Vancouver Island. 

Sukhi Sandhu

Co-founder, Wake Up Surrey; master’s in diversity, equity and inclusion, Tufts University

Sandhu is a community activist and for the past 25 years has been a strong advocate for Anti-Racism. He is the founder of the Equity Project, currently retained by Sport Canada as an external consultant to lead a Racial Equity and Anti-Racism Environmental Scan, which will include highlighting current gaps, researching best practices and providing recommendation for implementation.

Sandhu has completed his Masters in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Tufts University in Boston, with his graduate research focus on Advancing Racial Equality within Match Officiating in English Football. He is also a founding member of Wake Up Surrey, a grassroots community organization formed in 2018 in response to increasing gang violence and targeted shootings involving South Asian youth. His group highlighted the need for a racial equity lens to this multi-faceted social problem and participated in more than 150 meetings with all levels of government, policing authorities, community stakeholders, educators, mental health experts and victim families. 

In 1997, Sandhu also chaired the Intercultural Inclusivity Task Force for the City of Surrey whose report was the recipient of the National Race Relations Award and a template for many Parks and Recreation Departments on effectively outreaching and engaging with diverse ethnic communities.

Sandhu has many years of experience in global sports management including working at the FIFA World Cup, Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games.