I still don't know quite what I am yet, but I have tried now and again to be a dissident of sorts. I am a Commerce graduate with a specialization in the Asia Pacific region who has since never worked in business and am now working on a Masters in European and International Studies in Hungary, but I still call Vancouver home.
At the University of British Columbia I served a term as Director of Administration with the Alma Mater Society and worked as a fundraiser at the UBC Development Office. Since then, I have worked in government as an Assistant to the Minister of Community Development, Cooperatives and Volunteers and to the Minister of Transportation and Highways. I have worked on the Vancouver Agreement with the three levels of government to build on the expansion of economic development, health and treatment facilities in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside as well as helping to establish the Humanities 101 program there. In 2001, I was the provincial NDP candidate in Vancouver Point-Grey.
I have worked in the expansion of learning technologies in low access communities, youth voter registration with Rock the Vote BC and as a researcher with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. I helped found the Civil Society Development Project, the Impact of the Olympics on Community Coalition and have sat on a number of Boards in Vancouver including Better Environmentally Sound Transportation, Coalition of Progressive Electors, Vision Vancouver and the Or Gallery.
I completed a 10 month internship in Israel with the Mossawa Center, the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel. It was there that I began to write for the first time and have since then contributed freelance pieces to places like Arena Magazine, Inter Press Service, Reinventing Central Europe, Electronic Intifada, rabble.ca, Seven Oaks Magazine and the Palestine Chronicle.