Welcome to the School of Journalism, Eternity Martis and Shari Okeke

The School of Journalism is pleased to welcome two exceptional journalists to our tenure-stream faculty, Eternity Martis and 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.

Shari joins the School of Journalism effective May 1, 2022.

Eternity Martis is a familiar face at the School of Journalism. She brings her outstanding career as an educator and an award-winning journalist, editor and bestselling author with a proven track record in exploring new forms and avenues in nonfiction storytelling, including writing her bestselling book, They Said This Would Be Fun, an eye-opening look at the experiences of racialized students on Canadian university campuses and the winner of of the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Nonfiction. She is currently working on two upcoming book projects. The first deals with what she describes as the epidemic of violence against millennial women and the second will examine anti-Black racism in the Canadian criminal jury system.

Formerly a senior editor at Xtra, Eternity created and teaches the School of Journalism’s groundbreaking Reporting on Race: Black Canadians and the Media course, and has made as significant contributions as the 2021 Asper Visiting Professor and Journalist-in-Residence at the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia and as Simon Fraser University Library’s current Non-Fiction Writer in Residence. She is also collaborating with Nana aba Duncan at Carleton University on plans for establishing the Mary Ann Shadd Institute of Journalism and Belonging, focusing on research on media coverage of Black communities and centring the work and research of Black journalists.

A graduate of the MJ program, Eternity brings a deep understanding of the experiences of students from underrepresented backgrounds and of the media coverage of marginalized communities. She is an enthusiastic, reflective teacher who has been rewarded with much engagement and success in the classroom, even in these difficult pandemic times when she has had to deliver her courses remotely. Eternity has also been a writing coach for a number of years, specializing in sensitivity reading, with clients including journalism students, professors, TEDx speakers, published authors and even financial advisers, ranging in age from 18 to 60+. 

Eternity joins the School effective July 1, 2022.

The School of Journalism welcomes Eternity and Shari and looks forward to counting you as new colleagues and collaborators.