MEET JENNIFER REDDY

My parents moved here from Fiji in the 1970s. Growing up in Canada is a pretty big experience–at times it’s hard to know if I fit here or not. It’s been a long-term identity crisis in trying to find my place while giving myself permission to sew together my values. As a school board trustee in Vancouver, I feel like I have a real opportunity to be a bridge for a lot of individuals who feel like systems may not be in place for them. My ancestors were displaced and brought as indentured labourers to Fiji. My parents took a risk moving to Canada. We grow roots wherever the hell we can and that’s how we are wired. For me, it’s all about: how can I give back to the community meaningfully unless I know my history and the history of where I live? I think that’s something I took for granted growing up to immigrant parents in the East Kootenays not knowing I was on traditional Ktunaxa territory, not knowing what it means to be a settler, a daughter of immigrants, and the responsibility that goes with that.  

My role as a Vancouver School Board trustee is recognizing that education is a very powerful tool. You have to use it very mindfully because it can be used to oppress or liberate, depending on how we use the tool. I think that for me, recognizing what I don’t know is an important perspective that I can bring to the table. I can hit a lot of identity and intersecting criteria for people, but that doesn’t make me a representative. Being open-minded, listening, and showing up is something I admire about my mentors

 in leadership positions, so I am trying to model that while bringing my identities. As individual people, we’re so dynamic, we’re so heterogenous... to think that I can be a representative of all women of colour… that’s inaccurate, that’s incomplete. The biggest challenge for me is figuring out how to balance and how to have a spot at the table as well as making that space available for other people to fill in the blanks.