SFPIRG is an independent, student-run and student-funded society. To ensure that our work reflects the ideas and values of the student community at SFU with whom we work, SFPIRG is managed by a student-directed Board of Directors. The Board of Directors is charged with guiding the direction, vision, and growth of SFPIRG. The current Board of Directors’ term started in May 2023 and will end at the end of April 2024. See below to learn more about our Directors!
Interested in joining our Board of Directors? Our nominations period will be open again in the Spring of 2024.
2023-2024 Board of Directors
Arwaa Adnan
As someone who is part of many marginalized communities, I understand how important it is to educate ourselves on social and environmental issues in our society. I want to help create more inclusive places and provide resources to educate members in the community. During my term on the board, I want to learn what part I have to play in creating change in the spaces I occupy. I am passionate about LGBTQ+ rights and how to better support underprivileged students. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I understand how important it is to have rights for gender and sexuality and the freedom to express their identities. Alongside this, environmental justice
is important to implement in the curriculum of every program. In every program, from business to engineering, benefits from the inclusion of environmental studies to better understand the world around them and how it plays a crucial role in their jobs in the future.
Nebula (Anita) Shen 沈霁 (they/他)
As a social justice advocate, educator, and student, I am eager to continue to grow and fight alongside the SFPIRG for another year. I have experience working in social justice nonprofits, as a youth facilitator and as an elected student representative. I am proudly queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent, mixed-race, and a former youth in government care, and these identities shape my advocacy.
I aim to foster strong community connections between the PIRG and other student groups. I aim to listen to and amplify the interests of disabled, neurodivergent, queer, Black, Indigenous, POC (people of culture), newcomer, low-income, FYIC, and other multiply-marginalized students. I am actively interested in decolonizing curriculum and unlearning capitalist and ableist ways of being and knowing. I am currently also a representative in the Indigenous Studies Student Union, and I want to be a bridge between the many SFSS groups that do social justice work – we all share a vision for a better world and a better campus. As a poet and President of SFU Poetry Club, I also believe in the power of art for social change, and bring this creativity and passion to my social justice work. Together, we can heal, transform, and make change.
Divine Lwamba
I want to be a board member of SFPIRG because I want to contribute to making a difference on campus. During my term on the SFPIRG board, I plan to raise awareness and empower SFU to acknowledge the importance of healing justice as well as creating and planning events that are centered around healing justice. I believe that it’s important for students, especially students that are marginalized and/or dealing with trauma, to have safe spaces in which they can seek out support and community. I understand social and environmental justice to be movements that focus on achieving equity in our society as well as confronting the systemic issues in our society
that disadvantage marginalized people. When it comes to social and environmental justice issues, I’m passionate about confronting and dismantling systems of oppression. As a black non-binary person that’s grown up in predominantly white institutions I’ve dealt with racial trauma and microaggressions. I want to use these experiences to help foster safe spaces and communities for other people like myself which I believe can be done with SFPIRG. As a board member I value and support reproductive justice, gender and sexual diversity.
Tuleen Awad
I’m passionate about social and environmental justice, community building, and I want to be able to learn more about social justice movements and work with like minded students and groups who share these values on campus. I want to have a positive impact within and beyond the communities I take part in. I believe that being a board member of SFPIRG will enable me to drive these visions and work.
Rebecca Ballard
Hi, my name is Rebecca Ballard and my pronouns are She/They. I am a third year student here at SFU majoring in Indigenous Studies and minoring in Counselling and Human Development. As I have been learning more about SFPIRG and the work that is done here, I want to be able to contribute in a meaningful way! Being on the SFPIRG board would allow me to continue doing work in social & environmental justice while surrounded by amazing community.