Shari Okeke

Shari Okeke is an award-winning journalist who has been at CBC Montreal for more than 20 years. In that time she has reported extensively on radio and television, locally and nationally and also filled in as host on several radio and television programs. For six years she was CBC’s network business reporter based in Montreal. She is currently working as senior producer of the network radio program and podcast, The Doc Project.

For two seasons, her Peabody-nominated CBC podcast Mic Drop featured the stories of young people in their own words. Created in 2018, the goal of the series was to provide a safe space for teens to talk about what's on their minds – without any adult interruptions.

Shari also had a key role in the CBC Montreal series called Real Talk on Race. In that role, she spoke to mixed-race children about their experiences and explored how young people deal with racist remarks at school that are passed off as jokes.

At the CBC, she has consistently pushed for changes in the newsroom’s reporting in Black communities and in its approach to stories about racism. She is a proven leader within the public broadcaster and has an established track record as a mentor and a coach.

At Concordia University she designed and taught a course called Writing for Radio and Television. Shari also created and taught a course for CABJ’s J-School Noire 2021 in producing podcasts for Black youth in Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax. At Concordia, she recently hosted and moderated a discussion with Nikole Hannah Jones about the 1619 Project, which aims to put the consequences of slavery at the centre of America’s historic narrative, and has led a number of other conversations in the community including a panel about the politics of hair by Montreal’s Natural Hair Congress. Shari has also participated in many university panel discussions with departments of journalism, business, McGill’s Faculty of Law and also for the National Society of Black Engineers at Concordia.