He’s making educational spaces more inclusive by creating space for under-represented peoples
Age: 32
Job Title: Post-Secondary Instructor and Curriculum Developer at Norquest College
Major events in Kevin Chavez Laxamana’s household weren’t the Super Bowl or the NHL playoffs — but beauty pageants.
With a mother who was a makeup artist and hair stylist, Laxamana was surrounded by a celebration of the feminine all his life. That later inspired him to do field work with Balinese and Singaporean trans pageant competitors and sex workers for his anthropology thesis. “They call me their adopted nephew,” he says.
Laxamana’s work has always centred on building connected and inclusive communities. Although not trained as an educator, he’s won several teaching awards and now helps remove barriers and develop nontraditional educational practices for neurodivergent students at NorQuest College. “I’m also giving them tips and tricks on (how to) be their true selves in the workplace, how to navigate through accommodations, how to talk about hope instead of deficit,” he says. “It’s a very special specialized program — the first of its kind in Canada.”
Play is a key component of his work, and students are sometimes surprised to walk into Laxamana’s office and find him surrounded by bins of LEGO. “I feel like we are in the era of our society where people will be ‘locking in,’” he says, using the modern slang for intense focus and relentless grind, often at the expense of balance. “You can still achieve things while having fun. That’s the point of why we are breathing on this earth.”
At the start of his career, Laxamana lent his voice to marginalized folks through his research. But now, he prioritizes creating access for them in spaces he struggled to enter.
This article appears in the November/December 2025 issue of Edify
