Claudia Mitchell, PhD, FRSC is a Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Faculty of Education, McGill University and an Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. At McGill she is the Director of Institute for Human Development and Well-being and the founder and director of the Participatory Cultures Lab at McGill. Her research focuses on participatory visual and arts based approaches to working with young people and communities in relation to addressing critical social issues such as gender equality and gender based violence. She is currently carrying out this work with Indigenous  girls and young women in a number of fieldsites in Canada and South Africa where the aim is to support girl-led/youth-led ‘from the ground up’ policy and community dialogue to bring about social change. She also works with research teams in a wide range of other country contexts to address gender based violence, including Sweden, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and India. She is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning journal Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She has written extensively in the area of participatory visual methodologies: Doing Visual Research; and Participatory Visual Methodologies: Community, Policy and Social Change.

With over 20 years of experience in tech, Olivia brings a broad set of skills from engineering, product development and management, content strategy, user experience design and more to turn ideas into tangible results. As a product leader and entrepreneur, she has lived through the rapid evolution of technology and contributed to products that have impacted our behaviours, relationships, and way of life, not always for the best. Her involvement in the startup community in Montreal as mentor, meetup organizer, and conference speaker led her to Raison d’art. In many ways, portraitX embodies her passion for applying technology in novel ways that inspire people to be part of positive changes in their communities and organizations. She is delighted to be part of a diverse and talented team bringing this creative and innovative program to schools across Canada.

Chloe Garcia graduated with a PhD in Education from McGill University. Her doctoral research investigated the potential of YouTube, youth vlogs, and vlogging for teaching and learning about sexual consent. She specializes in sexualities education, media and digital literacies, youth participatory cultures, facilitation, and sexual violence prevention and activism. As a sex education consultant, her work ranges from program development and evaluation, to research and workshop facilitation. She continues to teach in the Faculty of Education at McGill University. She is proud to be part of the Raison d’art family!

Aron is a high school teacher turned graduate student at McGill University. At McGill, he is involved with creative writing, gardening, activism, and mindful movement. Aron's research explores the hidden dimensions of the internet and the consequences of young people's digital lifestyles. His aim is to support educators' efforts to help students develop responsible and critical digital literacies. Aron will be spending the year 2020 offline.

Claudia is a recent graduate from Concordia University and a translator at the very exciting start of her career. Having held positions in legal and business translation teams, she is happy to have joined portraitX in a socially-driven project that allowed her to tune in to different skills as a content manager. She is excited to try out different things and shape out her path on the way.

Tracey is a Montreal-based storyteller and writer of her everyday observances and occurrences. People are her most favourite subject of all. As a lifelong creative, she also constructs modern home décor miniatures for sport, and for sanity. She is wildly romantic in unusual ways, and she has a mouth that would make a sailor cringe. Her work has appeared in places like CBC Parent, Today’s Parent, Reader’s Digest, and Galaxy Brain. Photo credit: Andrea Hausmann of COCO HAUS Productions

Jack of all trades, master of some – Ellfie is a passionate fashion model and academic tutor based in Montreal. She has graduated from Cinema-Communications in college and is currently studying Psychology in university. With a background in computer science, she is in charge of tech support for portraitX. Ellfie has a fascination for anything creative and artistic, believing that beauty can be found in simple and unexpected places. She hopes to adopt a cat one day.

As a part of the portraitX team, Abigail works on coordinating social media pages. Some of her favourite things to do include making and watching films, playing around with other forms of digital art, and hanging out with her cats. She has graduated from cinema-communications at Dawson College, where she received a certificate for gender studies specialization. She is currently combining her two passions of film and gender while studying film production and interdisciplinary sexuality at Concordia.

Alix is completing her undergraduate studies in the Art Education Specialization program at Concordia University. She has experience teaching art to elementary and high school students from diverse backgrounds, including Selwyn House, Lower Canada College, Royal Vale Elementary and a community group of homeschooled Muslim children called Ma Petite Oumma. Alix is thrilled to work with the students participating in portraitX.

Coming soon!

Mélodie is in her first-year of Community Recreation and Leadership Training (CRLT) at Dawson College. She has worked in community recreation with youth as a camp counsellor at Sports Montréal and as a facilitator for the Programme de francisation at the St. Raymond Centre in N.D.G. Her participation in the Papineau Youth Council; the Notre-Dame en Noir committee for Black History Month; and Youth Fight Black, a team of activists created in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, attest to her leadership abilities and sense of commitment. A dedicated team player, she has received awards for sports ethics and participation in flag football and for player of the year in volleyball. As a portraitX moderator, this young woman aspires to provide the support and resources that will empower youth through their sexuality, and offer guidance to them when challenging societal taboos.

Davide is a recent graduate of the Computer Science Technology program at Dawson College. Starting his career, he has worked on both mobile and web front-end development. He believes that technology is best used for bringing communities together and to educate others. He is excited to work with an amazing team with such a powerful message.

Jeffrey is a Software Developer and recent Computer Science Technology graduate from Dawson College. He has experience working as a Functionality Tester, Data Analyst, Peer Tutor, and Backend Developer. He believes it is important that youth are not afraid of technology but become better educated on how to use it. He is thrilled to volunteer at portraitX to help develop tools to help others.