Carleton University Courage in a Time of Joy featuring CBC Sports Senior Contributor Shireen Ahmed (YouTube)

Please join us on Wednesday March 12 in the Richcraft Hall Atrium for the 2025 Kesterton Lecture, “Courage in a Time of Joy,” featuring CBC Sports Senior Contributor Shireen Ahmed.

Ahmed’s lecture will focus on the growth of women’s sports, the courage to talk about wider issues that affect women’s sport globally, and the silence that has fenced those spaces.

After the keynote, Ahmed will be joined on stage for a conversation moderated by CBC journalist Emma Weller, a Carleton Journalism alum and former Ravens varsity hockey player.

Join us for a reception and light refreshments at 6:00 pm, followed by the lecture at 7:00 pm. The lecture is open to all, and we welcome you to join us in person or virtually via YouTube livestream.

Shireen Ahmed is a multiplatform Senior Contributor with CBC Sports, a public speaker, and an award-winning Sports Activist focusing on Muslim women in Sports, and the intersections of race and gender in sports. She is an athlete, advocate, a community organizer, and works with different communities on empowerment projects.

She is a 2019 TEDxToronto Speaker and is the national ambassador to Sakeenah Canada, an organization that offers essential services to women and families who have survived violence. She has lectured and presented her work and research at a number of post-secondary institutions and organizations in Canada, the United States & Europe.

She is on the Board of Directors of Hijabi Ballers, a friend of Black Girl Hockey Club, part of the Executive Committee of the Muslim Women in Sports Network, and mentors students and budding sports journalists in official and casual capacities.

Shireen’s passion for sports, politics and women’s issues has been recognized by Sports Media for its candid discussions. Her work has been featured and discussed in The Guardian, TIME magazine, Sports Illustrated, The Walrus, Football Weekly, Racialicious, Chatelaine, The National Post, espnW, Globe and Mail, MSNBC Democracy Now! and TRT World. Shireen’s work was published in Best Canadian Sports Writing 2017. Her expertise is sought after by a host of international news outlets. In 2021, her academic work was published in Sports MediaVectors: Gender and Diversity, Reconstructing the Field.