Executive Director: Sharon Marshall, MBA

As the new Executive Director of CARFAC BC, Sharon champions artists’ rights as creative professionals and is committed to fostering creative spaces where Indigenous perspectives and cultural narratives are celebrated.

Sharon is an accomplished leader, combining over three decades of public administration, Indigenous community engagement, and entrepreneurial expertise. As the Founder and CEO of Cree8iv Collaboration Inc., she leads DEVA Training & Staffing Solutions, a social enterprise focused on empowering Indigenous women in remote communities and women rebuilding after experiences of intimate partner violence and incarceration. With an emphasis on energy justice, Sharon also works with Ecotrust Canada to support sustainable solutions for Indigenous communities, recognizing the intersection of environmental stewardship and community resilience.

An MBA graduate from Royal Roads University, Sharon approaches leadership through a holistic, strengths-based, relational lens, fostering skill development and growth among all of her teams.

Sharon is grateful to live, work and play on the traditional, unceded, and ancestral territory of the Snaw’naw’as First Nation of the Coast Salish peoples. She is a storyteller and creative writer with a passion for digital artmaking. In her free time, she enjoys reading and exploring the diverse natural landscapes of British Columbia.

Membership & Communications Coordinator: Emily Zhang

Emily Zhang is a multipotentialite arts administrator. She holds a BA in Art History from the University of British Columbia. She also has a Graduate Certificate in Museum and Gallery Studies. She has been heavily involved in the arts and culture sector within the lower mainland for over 10 years. Currently, she is the Membership & Communications Coordinator for CARFAC BC.

She is also the Artist Services Director for CARFAC National. Emily was involved in several CARFAC BC provincial-wide projects, including multiple Artist Toolkits. She was part of the team which developed the BC Gallery Catalogue. This catalogue features an interactive digital database of BC Arts Organizations. Emily works in cultural and educational programming for Coquitlam Heritage. She has additional experience in various cultural organizations like VIFF, the Craft Council of BC, and the Port Moody Arts Centre.

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Board of Directors

President: Miah Shull Olmsted

Miah Shull Olmsted (she/elle/y’all) hails from the deep south of the United States, born near the Chattahoochee River on Cherokee Nation lands. A global nomad since 18, she is a creative researcher and ocean protector with over 5,800 hours underwater. After working in Southeast Asia and Australia, Miah immigrated to British Columbia, bringing her curiosity, cameras, entrepreneurial spirit, and artistic documentary practice.

She earned a BFA in visual arts with a minor in art history at the University of British Columbia while learning with the land and siwɬkʷ, protected by the nsyilxcən-speaking peoples of the Syilx Okanagan Nation. As an emerging Matriarch with a large blended family of six adult children, their partners, and grandchildren—both human and four-legged—Miah honors her culture and heritage, committed to the principle of Tikkun Olam and accepting her responsibility to make the world a better place.

Her artistic practice connects past and future generations through visual storytelling in underwater cinematography, printmaking, public murals, photography, and generative AI. As an educator, she employs scientific, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual rituals and methods, encouraging youth and elders to explore through their physical senses, emotional networks, and the interconnectedness between human and non-human. Through intergenerational participatory practice, she honors knowledge keepers and cultural reciprocity, embracing many ways of knowing and being.

Currently living on Nex̱wlélex̱wm/Bowen Island in the ÁTL’KA7TSEM / Howe Sound, Miah is a graduate student at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology under the guidance of nehiyaw-Métis artist Jon Corbett. She engages in Indigenous Kinship-Computer Interaction and creative computational Indigenous frameworks that use storytelling for programming with Indigenous languages.

Through her family, community, and embodied artistic eco-practice, Miah is committed to using ethical digital art to uplift culture and foster a universal creative spirit, guiding future choices and actions toward regenerative and reciprocal relationships.

Treasurer: Tina Overbury

Tina Overbury is a multi-disciplinary artist and creative entrepreneur. She’s a writer, storyteller, and performer who works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. Tina’s art centers around visceral storytelling experiences within a circle-based practice. Always off-the-cuff and spoken from her core, Tina also co-hosts the podcast: Harleys and Hairspray with Madlove Music. Tina has created pieces for film, the stage, and in her solo writing. 

Tina is a Story Coach and Facilitator with The Writer’s Adventure community, hosting writing retreats and coaching authors. Her work is rooted in myth and mysticism, and always contains a spirit of PLAY.

Tina Overbury is a Storyteller, Facilitator, and Expressive Arts Therapist (in training) through the WHEAT Institute in Winnipeg. The program incorporates various art modalities, such as the visual arts, drumming, dancing, writing poems, improvisation, and playback theatre.

Tina works with narrative and story structure as a vehicle for human connection. She works in two capacities:

As an Expressive Arts Therapist, using story as the path to your healing and Expressive Arts Therapy as the process of work. She is also a Story and Writing Coach working with individuals and organizations who are ready to write their book, craft their signature keynote, and/or create their solo-show. Her process for this is called: Story From the Core.

As an artist she offers visceral storytelling for reconciliation experiences rooted in the principles of restorative justice. She has created pieces for film, the stage, digital storytelling, and in her writing. Most recently, she was published in Poeisis, an academic journal of Expressive Arts and Communication, and her 90 minute solo show, OMYGOD about ‘the women we burned, the babies we buried and Gods we worship’, has screened to global audiences. While her art centres around harmscapes and the imprints they leave, her work is rooted in the healing power of the Arts.

Tina brings thirty years of storytelling in theatre, film, and workshop facilitation and is the founder of Live Your Best Story, a deep listening retreat held on Bowen Island, BC, Canada. 

Her website is: https://tinaolife.com/

Secretary: Trevor Van den Eijnden

Trevor Van den Eijnden was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia, and currently resides
in Vancouver, British Columbia the traditional territories of the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw), Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ), and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm)Nations. He has two undergraduate degrees, a BA in English literature from Dalhousie University and a BFA in photography from NSCAD University, which included a highly productive exchange in his final year at L’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. He completed his MAA at Emily Carr University of Art
+ Design and previously headed the Visual Arts department at the Visual School of Art and Design Vancouver (VCADV). Currently, Trevor teaches design with a focus on inclusion, empathy, and ethical approaches to marketing and communications. His art practice focuses on the current geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and of coming to terms with the historical, contemporary, and future underpinnings of that term. His work focuses on re-presentations of visual indicators of historical shifts in thinking about nature and modernist mythologies around dystopia and utopia. His highly aesthetic objects require intimate or “full body” interaction to explore evidence of the “ideological pattering” of the world by means of the “visual patterning” of nature through techniques of reduction, repetition, and human interference.

Trevor will be among many of our CARFAC BC members opening their studio doors this month in the 2024 Eastside Culture Crawl.

His website is: https://www.trevorvandeneijnden.com/

Additional Board Members: Is This You?

CARFAC BC seeks members from Northern BC and Rural Representation. We also seek individuals with fundraising experience to join our Board of Directors. For more information, or to apply, click here.

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Get Involved!

CARFAC BC is seeking members from Northern BC and Rural Representation. We also seek individuals with fundraising experience to join our Board of Directors. For more information or to apply, click here.

If you are a professional visual or media artist interested in improving the working conditions of fellow artists in British Columbia through advocacy and education, you are invited to submit a Board of Directors Expression of Interest form. Candidates should have a strong commitment to CARFAC BC’s mission, vision, and values and a demonstrated passion for the visual arts. You will learn alot about the logistical side of British Columbia visual art, and benefit from being a part of our organization with its long history of advocacy for the arts.

Ideal candidates will have a broad range of skills and experience. Those with experience and skills in one or more of the following areas are encouraged to apply:

• Fundraising and development
• Accounting or financial management
• Advocacy, lobbying, or labour experience concerning artists
• Law/legal matters
• Board governance

Previous volunteer experience in the nonprofit sector, especially at committee or Board level, is recommended. Positions are open for Directors-at-Large.

Board members will serve on CARFAC BC’s Board of Directors for a two-year term (2021–2023). Board members are expected to contribute 5-8 volunteer hours per month, depending on committee or executive roles. Meetings are held approximately 10 times per year and are held via video conference.

CARFAC BC strives to be an inclusive and safe space for all, and to accurately reflect the diversity of the various arts communities that we serve. We strongly encourage applications from artists who are members of marginalized and/or underserved/underrepresented communities, especially individuals who identify as: First Nations, Métis, or Inuit, or people of colour; diverse gender and sexual identities (including LGBTQ2+); people living with dis/ability, etc.

Interested parties should read the CARFAC BC Board of Directors Terms of Reference document to review full details of Board responsibilities.  For more information or to apply, please send an email to director.carfacbc@gmail.com with the subject line “CARFAC BC Board of Directors” and include a brief statement of your interest in the organization, your experience and relevant skill sets. Thank you!

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