World Storytelling Day Concert

LORRAINE MICHAEL

Born in St. John’s, Lorraine Michael was raised in the Lebanese community. Lorraine is now retired but as an elected Member of the House of Assembly, feminist, and committed activist for gender and racial social and economic justice, her career spanned more than 50 years.

Then known as Sister Lorraine Michael, she started her career as a community leader first as a high school teacher on Bell Island and school principal under the St. John’s Roman Catholic School Board in her last. Her years as a teacher brought her as well to Baie Verte, the Burin Peninsula and the Codroy Valley.

With passion for social justice, she worked with gender-based analysis and research throughout the 1990s on an international level, studying the effects of globalization on women’s work. A voice for women’s justice, Lorraine coordinated the administrative and program affairs of feminist organizations and chaired the Women and Work Committee of the National Action Committee on Status Women (NAC) and served for a period as the committee’s Interim Executive Director.

During the 7 years in her role as Executive Director of Women in Resource Development Committee, she consulted with industry, labour, government and education to achieve employment equity in the natural resource development sectors in Newfoundland and Labrador. This work was an extension of her work in Labrador as an Innu Nation nominee on the Voisey’s Bay Environmental Assessment Panel from 1997 to 1999.

From 2006 – 2014 Lorraine was leader of the New Democratic Party of Newfoundland and Labrador and an elected member of the House of Assembly from 2006 – 2019 representing the districts of Signal Hill-Quidi Vidi and St. John’s-East-Quidi Vidi.

Lorraine Michael has degrees from Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Toronto.   When not working, she spends time with her other passion: music.  She is a member of the Philharmonic Choir of the Newfoundland Symphony Orchestra and enjoys sitting at the piano and playing old favourites.

TAMARA SEGURA

Tamara Segura is a Canadian Filmmaker. She graduated with honours in Film Direction
from the Cuban Instituto Superior de Arte. Later she specialized in Screenwriting at the
Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV de San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), an acclaimed
institution founded by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez to help diversify
the globe’s cinematic landscape. Segura’s films have been awarded film Awards in
Spain, Cuba, Canada, and Mexico. Her 2009 short drama Fireflies won the Martin
Luther King Award for Best Short Film of the year, given by the Cuban Young Filmmakers
Association. Her first feature-length screenplay The Sunflowers, was selected for
the prestigious Foundation Carolina Script Development Program in Spain. In 2010,
Tamara won a federal fellowship at Concordia University to conduct research about
the representation of motherhood in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Based in Newfoundland since 2012, Tamara has been awarded with the 2013 RBC
Michelle Jackson Award to Best Emerging Female Filmmaker for her film Before the
War. Her second Canadian short film, Song for Cuba, was produced by the National Film
Board of Canada and open the Busan International Short Film festival in Korea in 2017.
Meanwhile, she has also directed the digital content of the TV series Little Dog, produced
by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Recently, Tamara has co directed Becoming Labrador, a feature length documentary
produced by the National Film Board of Canada which screened at the Closing Night of
the Reelworld Film Festival in Toronto in 2019. Her short film C Sharp and D Suspended,
one of the finalist of the CBC Short Film Face Off contest, premiered at the East
Coast Reel Gala of the FIN Festival 2018 and is currently available in CBC Gem.
Currently, Tamara is completing her MFA in Film production at York University.

MARYAM SHEIKH

MARYAM SHEIKH is a mother of two, a boy and a girl, from Kenya. Maryam just completed a Master of Arts in Anthropology at Memorial University, Newfoundland, and also possesses another Masters in Development Studies from University of Nairobi, Kenya, A Graduate Certificate in Women and Leadership from Eastern Mennonite University, USA and a Bachelor of Education from Moi University, Kenya. She served the development sector in Kenya, working with the Government of Kenya, NGOs and the UN. She is committed to child protection and ending violence against women and children. Maryam loves storytelling and comes from a long line of storytellers and poets. Currently, she is an independent activist working towards social change and is part of the Steering Committee of the End FGM Canada Network. She was voted as one of the 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada in 2020. Storytelling for social change is something she wishes to promote.