Daria Simone Strachan (she/her) is the 2024 recipient of the Sophie’s Live Out Loud scholarship and she exemplifies leadership primarily through her passion for filmmaking. For Daria, filmmaking is a way to tell impactful stories, particularly about marginalized communities in an effort to uplift them and ensure they receive adequate representation onscreen and off. She uses her passion as a tool to help change the narrative about who is qualified to tell these stories.
Daria was a member of the 2024 Cohort at Black Girls Film Camp (BGFC), where she was one of 10 “Teen Directors” selected from hundreds of applicants nationwide. There, she spent 16 weeks with her peers, utilizing that space to tell her story through film. Another facet of her leadership qualities shines through her advocacy for youth experiencing homelessness. Daria feels strongly about other issues related to this cause, such as racial injustice and homophobia/transphobia, leading her to work with Sasha Bruce Youthwork, whose main demographic is Black, Brown, and queer youth. She supported Sasha Bruce’s mission to end youth homelessness by creating a documentary to celebrate the organization’s 50th anniversary and raise awareness about its cause. Daria will be attending Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film and Television in the fall of 2024.
“I want [queer] people to know that there are spaces for them in any community, and any type of job field. You may think that there’s not, but there’s always going to be people, even if you have to look in corners for them.”
