IJA Board Elections

To me, juggling is about more than the art form itself. From the day I learned how to juggle, it was about community. I was taught by my local juggling club at age six and started attending meetings regularly. As I grew up, I realized more and more that the community was held up by a few key members. Everything I took for granted wouldn’t exist without people working tirelessly for the benefit of the community.

My experience as an IJA officer has been similar. It has given me a behind the scenes look at everything that goes on just to keep the organization running and the festival happening each year. The priceless experiences I have had at IJA festivals have been made possible entirely by volunteers.

My goal of being on the IJA Board of Directors is to further my commitment to the juggling community and to the IJA. I hope that by volunteering for the IJA, I can help spread juggling to more people, and enable them to have the same positive experiences I have had.

I am a professional juggler, an educator of circus arts and a community event organizer based in Vancouver, Canada. I started juggling in Europe about 12 years ago. I have attended multiple festivals around the globe and a founder of the object manipulation festival, Madskillz Vancouver, that has been running for the last 9 years.

To be honest, my understanding of the IJA activity is slim at the moment, but I am willing to learn and grow with the organization. If I get voted in, I want to explore ways to make our passion accessible and understood to non-jugglers. Would love to try and change the stigma that juggling has in order to create the next era of mind blowing jugglers. Let’s study and define the new trends of object manipulation around the world, help fuel those communities, create a place to educate each other on the various trends and branch all of it together to make the bigger picture.

If you want to know more about me or discuss about juggling and the community, just drop me a line at jugglerzen@gmail.com. I love meeting other jugglers, chatting about juggling, and learning other point of view about the art and the community.

Cheers!

Hi! I’m running for the IJA Board of Directors to help the organization
continue with the great strides we’ve seen in the past few years and to
pave some exciting new directions. Specifically, I am interested in
helping the IJA to develop tutorial series that are internally consistent
and backed by best practices of teaching and learning.

My pedagogical (teaching and learning) experience comes from teaching
subjects from physics to philosophy to juggling in contexts from university
instruction to video tutorials to coaching. I’m almost done my PhD
(PSYCHED!) where I research how students learn chemistry. I got to my
first IJA by winning the 2011 IJA tutorial competition!

My juggling and organizational experience spans 13 years: I have co-founded
both juggling clubs that I’ve been a part of, been the head organizer for
four festivals (including starting the Guelph Fest) and been involved in
the planning of five other festivals, including one IJA. My strengths in
these areas are understanding big-picture administration and executing fun,
creative ideas (like the juggling escape room Emily and I made for the
Guelph Fest in 2017).

I look forward to bringing my strengths to the IJA Board of Directors for
these upcoming years.