MEETING WITH WOMEN LEADERS

Feminist and LGTB activist who has grown up in the Colectivo Gamá, where she was president between 2005-2012, a period in which the Canary Islands LGTB Coordinating Committee was created among the existing entities. Subsequently, she has been treasurer, vice-president and member. She was the driving force behind the think tank Activistas sin salón, and is currently co-coordinator of the group of families.

At the national level, she was the driving force and first coordinator of the International and Human Rights Area of the LGTB State Federation from 2002 to 2007, during the presidencies of Pedro Zerolo and Beatriz Gimeno, making contact with European, Latin American and Caribbean entities and the few existing in North Africa. During those years she had an intense work within Ilga Europe, in different working commissions to elaborate European directives on LGBTI rights as well as in working groups in Ilga itself. She was the FELGTB’s representative to the UN and she was able to achieve recognition as a collaborating entity within ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council). She was the first in Europe to achieve this.

From 2007 to 2009 she was Secretary General of the FELGTB and is currently a member of its advisory committee. Her activism has also been linked to training to different levels: technical, political and activists.

I was born in the city of Telde. Even as a child I was passionate about reading and writing. My studies were directed towards the subject of Health and I am a Nursing Assistant Technician. I have been a monitor of Radio Ecca’s courses for many years: School for Parents, Health and several courses dedicated to Women, a subject I am very passionate about.

I am an Auxiliary Nursing Technician, working as such in several Speciality Outpatients’ Departments and in Hospitals such as Doctor Negrín, Materno and Hospital Insular where I retired. I learnt a lot about the subject in the Women’s Courses of Radio Ecca. As I was a monitor I had to inform myself and I got hooked on the subject. Doctor Araceli de Armas told me that she had carried out a study on the different ways women get ill. She drew up a project to create the Women’s Experimental Centre, the first Feminist Centre in Spain. All over Spain there were Casas de la Mujer, with the ideology of Franco’s Women’s Section. Four women took it upon ourselves to get an appointment at the Town Hall to get support for this project. I was one of those women and we got a big house with a beautiful garden.  I have continued militating and working until now.

I am a person who is restless to change the world. President of the Isadora Duncan Women’s group. As a group we give talks to neighbourhood associations that ask us to do so. We have also taught in schools about equality. We are in contact with other Women Groups in Gran Canaria and every time a woman is murdered in the Canary Islands, we meet in Triana.

We have a literary workshop which has produced books. In 2002 I won a prize for a story published by the Telde Town Hall and I have published 7 books, some with the collaboration of other women, the last one entitled PERDONA QUE NO ME CALLE (Sorry I do not shut up) with 62 women with stories about gender violence. I have also participated in Crónicas viajeras (Traveling Chronicles), describing trips around Europe with the Pimpinela Group (one of the members of our organisation).

With 9 years of experience in L’Orèal Spain, founder of the startup Better an App, trainer in business schools such as ISDI, UNED and MBA Business School, mentor in entrepreneurship programmes of the EOI, IMPACT and SPEGC, networking dynamics facilitator and expert consultant in digital business, personal branding and digital identity.

She currently trains, mentors entrepreneurship projects and develops consulting services for digital business at Atenerva. Minerva created ASOMBROSA as a space of inspiration and development for women who decide, seeking to stimulate leadership, conciliation and the female community in the world of business and entrepreneurship.

Member of the Spanish Association of Art Therapists (ATE) and the Spanish Federation of Creative Therapies (FEAPA). Founder of the company Nutoro SL, pioneer in the development of art therapy programmes for centres and institutions in the Canary Islands, Germany and Canada. Multidisciplinary artist specialising in performance. Application of the gender perspecitve in therapeutic and didactic work.

In 2014 her workshop “El escondite” (the hiding) won the National Award for good practices working with the Cabildo of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria. With the Cabildo she has collaborated in workshops for women and children in situations of exclusion in different municipalities of the islands. She collaborates with several psychologists’ offices in Gran Canaria and other islands as an expert in psychotherapeutic applications of art. In recent years she has carried out important teaching work in collaboration with the Government of the Canary Islands. She collaborates with sheltered centres for the treatment of child trauma. She also develops private practice in Las Palmas.

Through her visual work, she investigates the relationship between digital culture and gender issues. Her work has been exhibited individually and collectively at the Saro León Gallery. Her virtual characters and representations, video games and videos address various gender issues. An expert in art and feminism, she has given numerous lectures at public and private institutions. With her articles on art and gender issues, she has collaborated with the magazine La Boletina, and the magazine M Arte y Cultura Visual, of which she has been a member of the editorial board and contributor. As an activist, she has collaborated with several feminist associations such as the Asociación Mujeres Jóvenes de Gran Canaria “Ágora Violeta” and the Asociación Mujeres Solidaridad y Cooperación. She has also developed an importat number of intervention projects with women at risk of social exclusion, immigrants and/or in situations of gender violence, and in projects for the promotion of women’s associations and empowerment.

In the field of art, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of MAV Asociación de Mujeres en las Artes Visuales and coordinator of its driving force in the Canary Islands. In 2013, she co-founded ArteMisia Mujeres + Arte, a group of professionals linked to culture in its different facets (creation, management, research).

In 2017, she received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize, awarded by the Feminist Network of Gran Canaria in recognition of her career and commitment to women’s rights.

In the field of the video game industry, in 2018 she developed the story and script of “El Camino de Kioni”, a video game with a gender perspective, and won the Telefónica ULPGC Chair Award for Best Video Game 2018, awarded for her commitment and the social impact of her work

Last year, 2019, she designed and directed the video game “Where is the/your limit?”. The video game, confronts female iconography in the art and digital world, proposing a debate on the current use of video games and the sexist projection of the image of women.

She is currently a member of the board of directors of the Asociación Canaria de Desarrolladores de Videojuegos (ACADEVI), and published in 2020 the results of the research: Gender, gamers and videogames: a gender approach to the consumption of video games and the situation of female gamers in the sector.

She studied Philosophy and Educational Sciences at the University of La Laguna. She has worked since her professional beginnings in Rural and Local Development, her first incursions in these areas were in Latin America, and later in Gran Canaria:

– In Valsequillo with the Workshop Schools and Trade Houses and with the European projects`”Now” for the training and working insertion of rural women,

– And since 2000 in the Asociación Insular de Desarrollo Rural de Gran Canaria (AIDER Gran Canaria), with the Local Development Programme “Leader”, and incorporating gender and youth approaches in an important number of rural development projects.

She believes that we cannot think of equality without women’s human rights. Human rights, and particularly the rights of women who live and work in rural areas, have become a fundamental axis of her work. She contributes to make women visible, suppport their empowerment and vindicate their position and their work within the maintenance of the common wealth. She also works on the (re)knowledge of their contributions as transmitters and sustainers of rural cultural heritage and on the promotion of rural women citizenship.

She was distinguished with the Mujer Rural Canarias prize in 2018, an award granted by the Government of the Canary Islands to recognise the important role of women in the primary sector of the Islands. This awards  aim is also to contribute to the visibility of rural women´s work and to keep promoting gender mainstreaming in the agricultural and fisheries policies of the Islands. 

She started her career in the world of videogames after graduating in Computer Engineering. Her first steps were made during the “gamejam”, events where artists, programmers and musicians create a videogame in a weekend.

At the beginning, the majority of the participants in these events were men, but it was Laura’s initiative to create a group composed only of women that in successive editions more girls from all disciplines began to appear in this type of events and to feel comfortable in them, to the point that in a survey of the participants they already answered that they wanted to participate with the boys.

Now, from her position, Laura is trying to show that in the world of videogame development there are also women and that they can follow their dreams just like men.

With a degree in Journalism and specialising in Protocol and Institutional Relations, I have developed my career in the main national media. I took my first steps in the news services of Televisión Española and Radio Nacional de España where I worked for two years.

From then on, I began to collaborate with media groups such as Atresmedia and Mediaset, always linked to the news programmes of Cuatro, Telecinco and La Sexta. For several years I also worked for sports, providing coverage for Deportes Cuatro and Being Mena.

However, and often combining several jobs at the same time, I have been a scriptwriter and hostess at the Maspalomas Carnival, television and radio producer and presenter. In this case I was linked for 3 years to the political and current affairs programme “El Foco” of the Canary Islands Autonomous Television, where I managed the contents and presented together with Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. This period I also worked since 2016 with CADENA SER radio.At this station I started in 2016 producing the contents of the political programme “Hoy por Hoy el Drago” under the guidance of its director Evaristo Quintana. Now, four years later, I direct and present the magazine and news programme “Hoy por Hoy Las Palmas”.