The MyConnext Management Committee
Andria Wilson Mirza
Andria Wilson Mirza is the Director of ReFrame, the screen industry’s gender equity coalition founded and led by the Sundance Institute and Women In Film Los Angeles (WIF). She leads systemic change initiatives with industry leaders, partner companies and studios, and diversity advocacy organizations. Prior to ReFrame, she was the Executive Director of Inside Out, Canada’s largest LGBTQ film festival. She led Inside Out through a period of transformative growth, establishing the world’s first international Film Financing Forum for LGBTQ filmmakers and launching two film funds, including an endowment to support queer women, trans and non-binary filmmakers. She spearheaded a 4-year partnership between Inside Out and Netflix, co-founded the North American Queer Festival Alliance (NAQFA), and partnered with OUTtv to build the Out on Set database for LGBTQ talent.
Named ‘one of 15 Canadian women to watch’ by the CBC, Andria has been a featured speaker at industry events including Sundance, SXSW, TIFF, Cannes Marche du Film, Berlin’s European Film Market, ComicCon, AFM, Outfest, Oslo Fusion, and Iris Prize Producer’s Forum, among others. Passionate about developing pathways for the next generation of diverse storytellers, she was a founding mentor of Soho House’s international ‘Open House’ Mentorship Program, a consultant for EFM’s Toolbox Mentorship, and served on Telefilm Canada’s diversity and inclusion advisory. She is currently on the advisory board of Hire Survivors Hollywood. With her wife, Fawzia Mirza, she owns and operates Baby Daal Productions.
Their feature film THE QUEEN OF MY DREAMS had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Andria received a CMPA IndieScreen Award nomination for producing, while Fawzia received a Director’s Guild of Canada Discovery Award nomination for directing. Baby Daal’s slate also includes queer Muslim documentary feature COMING AROUND, Drew Denny’s forthcoming feature documentary SURVIVOR-MADE, and the narrative project HEIRLOOM, which was named to the 2022 Muslim List of the Black List’s best unproduced scripts from Muslim creatives. In 2020, Andria produced the inaugural PopShift Summit with Pathos Labs, which brought together 150 top television writers, behavioral scientists, and social justice leaders to strategize on creating a more equitable future. Andria lives in Los Angeles.
Dr. Louise Fitzgerald
Dr. Louise Fitzgerald is Professor Emerita of Psychology and Gender & Women Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an expert on the causes and consequences of sexual harassment. Her research interests focus on sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as other forms of sexual violence. In particular, she has studied the antecedents and consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace, subsidized housing, higher education, the military and the restaurant industry. Her research group completed a 10-year longitudinal project funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health that collected data in a variety of organizations as well as in-depth clinical interviews of victims. This work examines the effects of harassment, coping characteristics of those who are harassed, and the influence of environmental factors on both the incidence and outcomes of this phenomenon. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide theoretical and empirical insights to guide institutional and social policy change in work and educational institutions.
Her awards and honors include: Fellow, American Psychological Association –Counseling Psychology; Fellow, American Psychological Association – Psychology of Women Fellow, American Psychological Association – Industrial/Organizational Fellow, American Psychological Society Holland Prize for Research in Personality and Career Development-1992 Distinguished Contribution to the Psychology of Women – Div. 17 Committee on the Status of Women - 1992 Distinguished Contribution Award of the Washington Educational Press for Outstanding Treatment of a Public Concern 1994 Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy – American Psychological Association – 2003 Heritage Award, Distinguished Contributions to Research in the Psychology of Women – American Psychological Association – Division 35, Psychology of Women – 2010; and the Lifetime Career Award from the Conference on Occupational Safety and Health.
Wokie Nwabueze
Wokie Nwabueze is an accomplished workplace culture, inclusion, and conflict strategist who brings over 20 years of diverse experience building transformative programs, policies, and practices to advance equity, integrity, diversity, and belonging within global organizations and complex communities.
Wokie’s research and work provides the tools and process to explore and leverage how identity and social constructs, lived experience, cultural expectations, and internalized unconscious bias shape our relationship to power, our voices, visibility, belonging, discord, and ultimately, our capacity to lead in today's environment. Her work has impacted a wide range of Fortune 500 companies, financial services firms, creative agencies, academic institutions and brands.
Wokie has held several senior organizational positions, including her role as Prudential Financial’s Vice President of Strategy in their office of Global Business Ethics, Integrity, and inclusion. Recruited in the wake of a class action discrimination lawsuit, she innovated Prudential's first-ever workplace integrity strategic plan and workplace resolution office to build a culture of integrity, inclusion, and civility impacting 40,000 employees and independent sales agents globally.
Early in her career, Wokie practiced M&A and employment law at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pitman and worked with a prominent women's advocacy organization litigating on behalf of victims of gender violence. Wokie received her BA from Wellesley College and her JD from Columbia University School of Law. She is a Certified Organizational Ombuds and sits on the Board of Cornell’s University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations's Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution.