Ranya Salvant

Ranya "RJ" Salvant is a filmmaker and multimedia journalist from Sunrise, Florida who grew up in the South after she and her parents sought political asylum from Haiti in 1993. Growing up as a first-generation, queer kid, storytelling became her path to self-actualization and wisdom. She has taken her love of storytelling to reveal the intersectional needs and experiences that come with identity and culture as expressed through art. She's currently a graduate student at the University of Oregon studying Multimedia Journalism and Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies. She works as a journalist for the arts and culture editorial, The Knockturnal, and is a video editor for Studio ATAO, where she works to create educational videos that help inform food and service workers of the colonial impact on food and agricultural practices.

She is currently producing pieces that discuss a variety of culture and identity topics like the Black female identity in media, educators of color in the Oregon School System, and community building through the grassroots efforts of a displaced, African American community in Portland. She is working this December on a visual story in Colombia about the local artists and their connection to Afro, Indigenous and Latinx culture and traditions. She's aiming to finish her degree and is being mentored by the photojournalist, Danielle Villasana, to continue working on cultural stories globally. With her own production company, she will begin creating documentaries and film that focus on representation and decolonizing the screens.