Guest: Sheliza Jamal
Sheliza dives into a conversation where she explores what it is like to consider both surviving and thriving in order to make it in the world. She delves into internalized emotions that she endured along the way like, sadness, anxiety, shame. She balanced many competing identities related to social identities, racial trauma and imposter syndrome. She shares denying her own roots, rejecting her identity, and her big coping mechanism was to shove her experiences aside or hide behind them. She accounts for what imposter syndrome manifested within her, and that knowing she was well put together and looked put together to the outside world, but what she had to do in order to stay put together really came at a cost. She explores what it was like under pressure to please others; the unhelpful concept of othering others; unwilling for years to acknowledge the colour of her skin, the sound of her name, and fear associated with being ‘brown’. Through her journey, she has been able to contribute to social justice work, personal growth, and be given opportunities that she can choose to share learnings with other women of colour, and mentor other young women. Her key message to the listeners is that: be kind and compassionate with yourself; each person is a learning and growing being, so keep learning; listen to yourself –physically, mentally, emotionally; think about the resilience of ancestors; and keep working to love yourself.
Guest Bio: Sheliza Jamal is the founder of Curated Leadership, a coaching firm that fosters partnerships with leadership teams, non-profits, and corporations to develop their knowledge in the areas of equity and diversity to build inclusive communities. As an Equity and Inclusion facilitator and Ontario certified educator, Sheliza brings over a decade of experience in designing and implementing training and development programs aimed at addressing inequitable outcomes for underserved communities. She has a background in arts education and often uses theatre-based techniques to develop embodied empathy to engage participants in dialogue about oppression. Sheliza uses a calling in approach to bring people together to listen and learn with empathy.
Sheliza is a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is currently completing her PhD at Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto in the Department of Social Justice Education with a research focus on anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism in Teacher Education Programs.
Passionate about: YWCA – mentorship program https://ywcavan.org
Clubhouse Group Name: Curated Conversations
