In the lead-up to the Vancouver Pride parade (which takes place on August 5), we’ve compiled profiles of LGBT community members that, together, offer just a brief view of how multiple identities overlap, interplay, and interact to make up each individual’s totality. To see more of our Pride 2018 coverage, click here.

There came a moment in Yogi Omar’s English-speaking journey when he realized he had grasped the language. The queer activist—who had moved to Canada from his home of Indonesia to attend postsecondary school at the age of 18—was watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, one of several TV series he had picked up in an effort to improve his English, when he started laughing. Without his having to use Google as a reference, one of the jokes from the beloved teen dramedy had clicked with him.

“I started crying because I was like, ‘I got it,’ ” Omar recalls for the Straight by phone. “I got a joke.” That was almost two decades ago, and the psychology grad hasn’t “shut up” since. And he’s using his voice for good.

Now the co-owner of the local InspirationALL Talent Agency, Omar manages a group of primarily commercial and background actors, finding spots for them on film and television sets. It’s a sweet irony that’s not lost on the young entrepreneur—and one he doesn’t take for granted. “I learned how to speak English from watching all these TV [shows] and films,” he says, “and then now, my job is to put people there. That’s always my grounding moment of ‘I love it.’ ”

As a gay Chinese man who is well aware of Hollywood’s systemic discrimination, Omar takes care to accept as many qualified LGBT folks and people of colour onto his roster as possible. On-screen representation, he stresses, is important, especially given the recent movement of casting directors seeking more diverse characters. “You learn from what you see; you learn from what you hear,” Omar explains. “And you definitely don’t get a lot of representation in role models in the media—especially the American media—that we all consume. So the more representation there is, the better.”

That representation is also the key driver behind Omar’s activist work. Since moving to Vancouver in 2001, the 35-year-old has volunteered his time with many LGBT organizations, including Qmunity, Out on Screen, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. In addition, he has sung with the Vancouver Men’s Choir for a decade, and in 2013 he organized two “kiss-in” demonstrations at Vancouver’s Russian consulate to protest Russia’s antigay law. At the moment, Omar is serving his second term on the City of Vancouver’s LGBTQ2+ advisory committee, where he helped the region become the country’s first municipality to ban anti LGBT-conversion therapy.

When Omar arrived in Vancouver, he saw very few people of colour in the city’s LGBT spaces and wanted his involvement in the community to pave the way for other nonwhite bodies. Since then, he says, there’s been improvement, though he’d still like to see more queer folks of colour at board meetings and in bureaucracy. “It’s a priority that I really, really want to emphasize to people who may look like me,” Omar says. “I want to, hopefully, be an example of, like, ‘Okay, if he’s doing this, maybe I can too.’ ”

Omar, an occasional film producer, also spotlights LGBT stories on the big screen. Most recently, he helped bring to life a short flick that deals with bisexuality, or what he calls the “least represented” letter in the LGBT umbrella. Like his activism and various roles in the LGBT realm, his films communicate a vital truth: that there’s more than one way to be queer. “A lot of the time, people will be like, ‘Oh, that’s not me because I’m not femme. That’s not me because I’m not a drag queen,’ ” he says. “Of course: but there are all these layers of being queer and all these things that you can do.”