Yasmin Shiraz

Yasmin Shiraz is an award-winning and nationally acclaimed filmmaker and author of Retaliation and The Blueprint for My Girls empowerment series for teen girls. Her books are used as the foundation of violence prevention programs as well as tools of guidance, inspiration and empowerment at schools and non-profit programs throughout the United States.

Her first film project, Can She Be Saved? addresses the issue of teen girl fights and has received awards, official selections, and honorable mentions from The Women’s International Festival, Indie Fest, The San Diego Black Film Festival, The Texas Black Film Festival among others. In addition, Shiraz is the 2010 NC Black Film Festival Emerging Filmmaker.

Her latest book Retaliation, a novel about a community’s response to violence, led Shiraz to partner with the Boys and Girls Clubs in creating violence prevention programs for youth and was honored by the American Library Association with being named to the 2009 Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. Her Retaliation Violence Prevention initiative has been implemented in various violence-prevention programs for middle school and high school students in Washington, DC and Syracuse, NY.

Shiraz is a highly sought after radio & TV youth expert appearing on FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS news affiliates nationwide. Ebony, Essence, CosmoGirl! and Teen People magazines have featured reviews of Shiraz’s Blueprint books and/or have asked her to contribute to advice articles for teens.

Yasmin Shiraz is an empowerment speaker who has lectured for The NAACP, National Urban League, and numerous universities. Her topics include: Violence Prevention, Success & Motivation, The Politics of Hip Hop Culture, Entrepreneurship, The Blueprint for My Girls empowerment series, and others.

Shiraz is the Chief Executive Officer of The Signals Agency, a niche marketing firm which creates unique education and empowerment opportunities and events for youth focused companies. Her agency has already worked with The YWCA, Illinois State University, Girls Inc, The University of Delaware, Girl Scouts, The US Postal Service, Planned Parenthood, The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, The WNBA’s Washington Mystics, Delta Sigma Theta, Inc. and many others. In addition, she is the former publisher and editor-in-chief of Mad Rhythms, one of the most widely-read urban entertainment college publications in America and the former president of College Entertainment, Inc., a marketing firm that created college tours and marketing opportunities for corporations nationwide.

Shiraz is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and Association for the Promotion of Campus Activities. She has her masters and bachelors degrees in Sociology, having graduated from Hampton University and Morehead State University, respectively.

Find out more about Yasmin Shiraz and her work by visiting her website.

The Geek

Rahsheen Porter has been a computer geek since he started coding in Logo Writer on an Apple IIe back in the 4th grade. He quickly progressed to Basic, Qbasic, Turbo Assembler, C/C++, and Pascal. He used to want to be a game programmer and could actually write small programs in machine code in DOS.

That was a long time ago. Rahsheen eventually started primarily using Linux. He did a few small coding projects, including:

• The E-PlayCD and E-Exec Epplets for Enlightenment 0.16
• A Textbox widget for the Enlightenment Epplets library
• a Tasklist App for the ROX Desktop

The Artist

Rahsheen is also a singer/songwriter and rapper. He produces his own tracks and plays a few instruments. You can catch him trying to sing over on YouTube. Rahsheen also has some original tracks that you can listen to here.

The Bodybuilder?

Rahsheen has always wanted to get bigger, but he never really got into weights. He hated weights, actually. He started working at a gym and, suddenly, lifting weights didn’t seem so bad. He changed his eating habits and started on a strength training program. Rahsheen has put on about 15lbs since he started strength training last year. He can finally overhead-press his 5-year-old son into his bunk bed. You can see Rahsheen’s progress and join him in reaching your fitness goals here.

The Blog

Rahsheen’s blog is about merging Social Media / New Media into his life to make it easier to succeed. He says, “A lot of people involved in internet marketing and sales view Social Media as some kind of cash cow.” Rahsheen prefers to use these technologies and social advantages to make himself more valuable to the world in general. If he can do that, he’s sure that monetary success will follow. You can also see Rahsheen’s writings at BlackWeb 2.0.

Rahsheen also says, “I have been able to make drastic physical and mental changes over a relatively short period of time. I would like for others to benefit from what I have learned.”

Check out SheenOnline to read his posts and find out more about this brilliant blogger.