Catherine Labiran
Poet
As a Nigerian woman who was born in New York and raised in London, Catherine Labiran is passionate about advancing human rights through poetry, advocacy and research. Catherine strives to infuse her diverse cultural experiences into exhilarating bodies of work enabling them to live lives of their own. She was selected as a winner of SLAMbassadors UK 2010, a winner of 30 Nigeria House, and was conferred the honour of writing the official Olympic Poem for London 2012 as one of London’s “12 Poets for 2012”. Catherine has worked for a number of human rights organizations including the US Human Rights Network, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and she is currently a Program Manager for Research and Training at the Praxis Project. In 2019, Catherine was selected as a Fellow for People of African Descent by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. In 2020, she was named as one of the Most Influential People of African Descent by MIPAD 100. In September 2021, she was conferred the honor of giving a keynote speech at the UN General Assembly.