Diversity and human rights champion, Chelsea Manning, to speak at C2 Montréal
This is Chelsea Manning's first international speaking engagement just over a year after her release.
MONTREAL, May 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ - Chelsea Manning, America's best-known whistleblower, will be taking the stage at the 7th edition of C2 Montréal, the transformative conference on commerce and creativity. A transgender woman, Chelsea is a vocal advocate for inmate rights and for the LGBTQ+ community. Her presence at C2 Montréal will focus on addressing the tech industry's well-documented gender discrimination problem.
At the upcoming C2 Montréal, taking place from May 23 to 25, 2018, Chelsea will be interviewed by Citizen Lab Fellow Lex Gill in the 360 Big Top, and get hands-on with participants through a masterclass and workshop.
"The conversation around diversity today is one that needs to be addressed head-on", said Richard St-Pierre, President of C2 Montréal, "and Chelsea Manning is the perfect person to do that. A true pioneer, we're humbled that Chelsea chose the C2 Montréal stage for her first public appearance in Canada. C2's objective is to spark conversations around topics that will propel participants and society. Chelsea's participation at our event will encourage revolutionary new ideas between seemingly conflicting industries, organisms and interests."
Chelsea is famous for releasing more than 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 in order to expose human rights violations that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. In 2013, the day after her sentence was rendered, she came out as transgender. With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, she fought to become the first-ever recipient of hormone therapy in a military prison.
"Not practicing diversity when designing and building tech really does have tangible consequences," declared Manning, referencing the dangers of racist code and predictive policing. "The decisions about who is involved in the development of tech really matters, [since outcomes] depend on certain experiences and biases."
Chelsea Manning's participation in C2 Montreal marks the first time she will be outside of the United States since her 35-year sentence was commuted and she was released from prison.
C2 participants will be able to sign up to register as of early May for all of the C2 Montréal 2018 programming, including Chelsea's talk, masterclass and workshop.
Other notable speakers taking the stage include Snoop Dogg, Jim Coulter and Dr. Sylvia Earle. The full list of 2018 speakers announced to date is available here.
About C2 Montréal
C2 Montreal is a non-profit organization that inspires 6,000 decision makers across continents and industries each year. In a collaborative environment specifically designed to provoke collisions and spark new ideas, C2 Montréal challenges participant biases, shift their perspective and explore completely new ways of doing business. Imagined by Sid Lee in collaboration with founding partner Cirque du Soleil, these three days of talks, workshops, extreme brainstorming sessions, meet ups, performances and festivities have been described as "challenging conventions" by The Economist, and "a business conference unlike any other" by Harvard Business Review. C2 Montréal will be presenting its 7th edition on May 23, 24 and 25, 2018, at Arsenal art gallery in Montreal, Canada.C2montreal.com
SOURCE C2 Montréal
Share this article