Jakin Vela
(jvela)

YP4 Staff Member

Southern Methodist University
2008 Fellow

» Read Jakin's blog

Jakin is now a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. He was a student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX but due to the credit crunch, getting student loans for a private education proved to be extremely difficult. There, he was heavily involved in academics and several student organizations. He was the president of Spectrum, SMU's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight organization as well as VP for Students for a Better Society, a progressive student organization. His hopes were to make SMU and other conservative schools and communities more aware of and educated about the issues that face the LGBT community. In his original screenplays and short stories, Jakin focuses on characters who self-identify as LGBT in hopes of making such characters and/or plots more main- stream.

As of now, Jakin is active in two non-profit organizations. He is a member of the Young People For 2009 Steering Committee. He is a founding board member of SCOMPA (Southwest Community of Motion Picture Artists) a film non-profit where he now serves as the Vice President.

After Jakin graduates UNT with his degree in Sociology he plans to go to graduate school to get his Masters in Sociology and see where life takes him from there. Jakin's dream is to work for a non-profit organization (maybe YP4 if they hire him!) while maintaining a foot in the entertainment industry. Other possibly career options are teaching at a university and doing sociological research. He realizes that whatever he chooses to do with his life, social justice will be one of his primary goals. Jakin feels that music, film, and other cultural expression of art are a very powerful way to impact a large audience and ignite change.