The Pac Rim Scholarship Committee is proud to announce the award of eight full scholarships for the annual Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability and Diversity.
Get to know six of the recipients: Betty Gaoteote, Alexandra Stribing, Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine, Karen Jeynes, Māhealani Ahia, and Jen Ham and read more about their work and contributions to this year’s conference theme: Beyond Access: Building a Culture of Belonging.
My name is Betty Gaoteote, a proud native of the South Pacific. In my professional capacity, I serve the American Samoa’s Department of Health as a program evaluator for the CDC’s Public Health Infrastructure Grant. My academic background is rooted in Human Services, a field I pursued with dedication, leading to my graduation from Walden University and the esteemed community college of American Samoa.
Beyond my professional endeavors, my life is enriched by the joy of exploring new culinary delights alongside my children Meridian, Mercy, and Niko. My passion for learning is a constant in my life, as I am always on the lookout for opportunities to broaden my knowledge and skills. This drive is not just for personal growth but is fundamentally aimed at benefiting the community and people I am committed to serve.
As I look forward to participating in the Pacific Rim Conference, I am filled with anticipation for the learning and growth opportunities it presents. I am confident that this experience will be transformative, aligning perfectly with my ongoing journey of personal and professional development. My story is one of continuous learning, dedicated service, and a deep commitment to the betterment of the people of American Samoa.
Dr. Alexandra Stribing, PhD, is an assistant professor at Kean University in Health and Physical Education. Her service initiatives focus on developing inclusive and empowering programs for youth with disabilities. She is the current director of the Cougars C.L.I.M.B. Adapted Physical Education program and Camp Abilities Field of Dreams. Dr. Stribing’s research efforts concentrate on motor development, physical activity, and health attributes of youth populations (a) with and without disabilities and/or (b) from disadvantaged settings. Specifically, her current research focuses onperceptual influences on actual motor competence in youth with visual impairments. Dr. Stribing has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals such as British Journal of Visual Impairment and Blindness, Journal of Motor Learning and Development, and Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly.
Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine, PhD BSN RN is an Arab disabled queer cisgender woman of color, Spoken Word Poet, Registered Nurse, and health humanities nurse scientist with an interdisciplinary certificate in Disability Ethics from University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Sabrina’s recently defended doctoral research explored the use of spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice. Sabrina serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Nurses with Disabilities (NOND) and UIC Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities and is a 2023 Zoeglossia (disabled poet) fellow. Sabrina will soon begin a postdoc in UIC’s Disability and Human Development Department. Sabrina’s goal is to create transformative change within healthcare education praxis by developing engaging pedagogic strategies to educate healthcare students about ableism and intersectional identity-based oppression. Her long-term goal is to found an interdisciplinary, applied public-humanities community-engaged healthcare equity center in a university that confronts healthcare inequity, violence, and oppression and promotes liberation, humanization, and belongingness for all patients, students, and practitioners.
Image Description: Sabrina is a brown skinned Arab woman with brown eyes, thick black eyebrows, and dark brown curls that have been dyed blonde and are tied up in a bun. Sabrina has a big smile on her face and is looking to the side.
Karen Jeynes has worked extensively as a writer for stage and screen, most recently as the writer, co-director and creative producer of comedy series The Morning After, and drama series Recipes for Love and Murder. Other productions she has developed and overseen with creative partner Thierry Cassuto at Both Worlds are Point of Order, Comedy Central News, and Parlement Parlement, and the documentary Africa and I, as well as working as the head writer for ZANews: Puppet Nation. She is also in demand as a script consultant, editor and advisor for TV, film and theatre work, working with local and international production companies and broadcasters, as well as individual writers. She is currently busy with her PhD on autistic representation on South African television through the University of Pretoria, and lobbying for the South African industry to reimagine the way it views disability representation on and behind the screen.
Māhealani Ahia (she/her/ʻo ia) is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi artist, scholar, activist, songcatcher and storykeeper with lineal ties to Maui. With a background in theatre arts, writing and performance from U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Irvine, Māhea is committed to creating artistic and educational projects that elevate voices of Indigenous feminist decolonial storytelling. She is a PhD candidate in English (Hawaiian Literature) and Graduate Certificate student in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she has taught “Indigenous Women’s Health,” “Writing For Healing,” “Indigenous Feminisms,” and currently “Intro to LGBTQ+ Studies.” Māhea serves her community as a cohort member of Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND), as a Hawaiʻi Pacific Foundation/East-West Center scholar, as Grievance Chair for UHM graduate Academic Labor United (ALU), as editor for Hawaiʻi Review and ʻŌiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal, as co-organizer of the Mauna Kea Syllabus Project, and as co-facilitator of “Committed: A Decolonial DeTour” which re/stories “asylum” mental health history in Hawai’i and is sponsored by the Indigenous Dis/abilities Hui Hawaiʻi and Mānoa Center for the Humanities And Civic Engagement.
Jen Ham is a fourth year PhD student in the History of Consciousness who theorizes from her embedded and embodied position as a blind-deaf woman of color in a constant state of co-constitution with her canine guide and the multiplicity of environments they traverse. Jen’s work explores the ways in which health/care emerges with/in entangled worlds. Pulling from research she conducted in Belgium and Denmark, Jen examines the particular ways alternative radical care systems grapple with the social-reproductive contradiction implicit to capitalism.
