Task Force team 2020–22

Angélique Willkie

Associate professor, Contemporary Dance, Faculty of Fine Arts

Angélique Willkie completed a Master’s in Economics before pursuing a 25-year career in Europe with dance companies and independent projects in dance, circus and music. Performer, dramaturg, and mentor, she is active in Montreal’s professional dance community and has collaborated with choreographers like Lara Kramer, Mélanie Demers, Fréderick Gravel, Clara Furey, Helen Simard and Daina Ashbee, among others.

In accordance with her values and her commitment to the community, Angélique participates actively in conversations on equity, diversity, and inclusion on the Boards of Administration of the Festival TransAmériques, Théâtre La Chapelle, the Fondation Jean-Pierre Perreault, and the Prix de la danse de Montréal. Associate professor in the Department of Contemporary Dance and co-director of LePARC, the performing arts research cluster of Concordia’s Milieux Institute of Arts, Culture and Technology, her current research interests focus on corporeal and decolonial dramaturgies. A Concordia University Research Fellow in 2019, Angélique leads the research project Dramaturgical Ecologies and is a doctoral candidate at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

Cynthia Alphonse

Cynthia Alphonse (BA 08) is the project coordinator for the President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism. She recently completed a MEd degree at the University of Calgary and her research interest centers around investigating the impact of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policy development practices on the experience of racially minoritized students in postsecondary institutions. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how language is used in policies to perpetuate a false sense of inclusion and belonging among racially minoritized students.

Cynthia joins the Task Force with over 10 years of experience working in and with Canadian universities. Prior to joining the Task Force, Cynthia worked at Mitacs and was responsible for the planning and coordination of professional development training sessions for graduate students at Canadian postsecondary institutions. As the Project Coordinator, Cynthia is the primary point of contact for the Task Force and is responsible for providing operational support.  She reports to the chair of the President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism.

Linda Teoli

Before her retirement in 2014, Linda Teoli held several high-level support positions at Concordia.  She worked at the Office of the President and then at the Office of the Vice-President, Services (now known as Services & Sustainability).  Aware of her extensive knowledge of the university’s administrative structures, the Office of the Provost approached her in 2017 to provide administrative assistance to Indigenous Directions as they developed their Action Plan.  Last October, the Provost’s area reached out to her once again, this time to support the newly minted President’s Task Force on Anti-Black Racism.  She jumped at the opportunity to assist in such an important endeavour.

Linda refers to Concordia as a magnet, an irresistible force that keeps drawing her back to the university.  Full retirement is on the horizon but, for now, she feels privileged to be part of this team which has been mandated with the task of generating recommendations to address systemic anti-Black racism in the institution.  She describes this journey as ‘history in the making’.

Angélique Willkie (Chair)

Associate professor, Contemporary Dance, Faculty of Fine Arts

Annick Maugile Flavien

Founding coordinator and manager, Black Perspectives Office

Annick Maugile Flavien is a Black community advocate, a Black scholar, the founding coordinator and manager of the Black Perspectives Office (BPO), as well as a steering committee member of the President's Task Force on Anti-Black Racism at Concordia University.

She is a three-time graduate of Concordia and has been working on campus for the last ten years where she had the opportunity to participate in and support grassroots EDI and anti-racist initiatives across campus. She now leads the Black Perspectives Office in its development of services and resources for Black students, staff, and faculty at Concordia, as well as anti-discriminatory consultations, workshops and trainings, and engagement opportunities for the broader community.

In her creative and academic research, Annick roots herself in communications, ageing studies, migration and geography in order to explore the transmission of intergenerational knowledge and identity for Black communities in Canada with the goal of better understanding Black community isolation in Canada and fostering connections across Black Canadian communities.

Jacqueline Peters

Part-time professor
Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association (CUPFA), equity diversity and inclusion officer and representative
Coordinator, Caucus of Black Concordians

Jacqueline is a member of the Task Force’s steering committee and a co-lead of the Employment Initiatives subcommittee. She is also the inaugural EDI Officer for CUPFA; Coordinator of the Caucus of Black Concordians and was a member of Concordia’s Advising and Working Groups on EDI.

As a part-time professor at Concordia in the Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistic Department, where she teaches Sociolinguistics, Jacqueline has made anti-racism an integral part of her work. She previously conducted studies that examined identity construction through the communicative styles of non-European immigrants, specifically those of sub-Saharan African descent living in Montreal. She has also researched the emerging Black-Canadian English dialect spoken in Toronto, and the identity (re-)construction of students of Jamaican heritage enrolled in the first university level Jamaican Creole class in Canada.

Jacqueline received her BA in Linguistics from Concordia and her MA in Linguistics from the University of Toronto and is a Doctoral Candidate in Linguistics at York University. Her doctoral dissertation, "Feeling Heard": The Discourse of Empathy in Medical Interactions, is a qualitative study on Empathy in Medical Interactions. This study includes a discussion of the role of ethnocultural empathy in dealing with racism in medical institutions.

Lisa White

Executive director, Equity Office

Lisa is the inaugural executive director of equity at Concordia University. Lisa began her advocacy and policy work in academic spaces when she joined the Concordia Student Union Advocacy Centre in 2006.

A Concordia alum, she has held key administrative roles such as Director of the Office of Rights and Responsibilities. Leading the newly established Equity Office, Lisa now oversees the strategic implementation of recommendations centered on advancing equity, diversity and inclusion at Concordia.

Lisa’s work is informed by a decade of experience in addressing issues of discrimination and equity in higher education spaces as well as social justice and community-based approaches.