VCU news

By Amelia Heymann

Educators, artists and community activists were honored at the 19th annual Burnside Watstein Awards, which recognize individuals who enrich the Virginia Commonwealth University community and make a significant difference in the lives of LGBTQIA+ faculty, staff and students.

The 2025 Burnside Watstein Awards ceremony was held March 26 at the James Branch Cabell Library and was livestreamed via Zoom. The ceremony was open to everyone in the community.

This year’s keynote speaker was the Reverend Lacette Cross, DMin, a community faith and nonprofit leader, speaker, and advocate whose work centers around race, sexuality, spirituality and building connections and community. Cross said the awardees made their office, institution, community and world a better place by showing up as their full authentic selves and recognizing that work needed to be done – and doing it.

“What our honorees have modeled for us today is the things that we individually can do that do not get us awards but allow us to make change in really impactful ways,” she said. “The one lesson is to stand out, show up fully as yourself, fully queer, fully committed, fully allied.”

Cross said it is important to be reminded that we are connected to a community that is bigger than ourselves.

“We believe in a future that is possible, but we have not yet experienced,” she said. “Let us continue to go forward in pleasure. Let us continue to go forward in community. And let us continue to go forward fully and freely and fiercely in the fullness of who we are.”

Here are this year’s winners:

Faculty Award

Nicole Killian is graduate director and an associate professor of graphic design in the VCU School of the Arts. Killian’s work uses graphic design, publishing, video, objects and installation to investigate how the structures of the internet, mobile messaging and shared online platforms affect contemporary interaction and shape cultural identity from a queer perspective.

Killian said they did not have a visible queer mentor when they were going through school, so they embrace the opportunity to serve that role for their students.

“I'm grateful for the time I've had to mentor our students, be a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen [to] … I see my students, and I feel seen by them,” Killian said.

Student Award

Gray Scott is a doctoral student in the School of Pharmacy and co-president of PrideRx, a student organization aiming to uplift pharmacy health care services for queer patients and to connect LGBTQ+ health care students and providers.

Scott is a vocal advocate for change, providing feedback on the existing curriculum, promoting the dissemination of research on treatment considerations for transgender patients and working to ensure that the needs and concerns of LGBTQIA+ students are heard by faculty and administration.

“This award is my reminder to keep pushing forward so I can join that health care community here in Richmond,” Scott said.

Staff Award

Myriam Kadeba, director of the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, has been working at VCU since 2016. Kadeba values helping to empower individuals and communities that hold identities that have been systemically and historically marginalized while promoting wellness, agency, community healing and thriving. 

Kadeba supports traditional gathering spaces, such as queer coffee hours, as well as expanding LGBTQIA+ visibility and education across the institution.

“To know Dr. Kadeba is to know love, community, belonging and possibilities,” said Ron Jones Jr., Equality VCU events chair.

Alumni Award

Chelsey Llayton graduated from the VCU School of Pharmacy with her wife in 2018. While at VCU during her residency there, she developed a curriculum that includes practical everyday pharmacy scenarios that integrate inclusivity into standard patient care.

Llayton said she wanted future students to feel “more prepared than I did to take care of all of our patients, and so that our LGBTQ+ patients were getting the care that they deserve from competent pharmacists,” Llayton said.

Llayton is currently an assistant professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Charleston School of Pharmacy. Llayton has focused a good portion of her career so far on increasing pharmacist education of LGBTQIA+ health, continuing to serve as adjunct faculty for the VCU School of Pharmacy.

Community Award

Aurora Higgs is a speaker, performer, and media producer who uses her platform to promote equity and elevate queer BIPOC voices. Higgs is the founder of Borealis Consulting LLC, and a board member of the Virginia League of Planned Parenthood. Through her work, Higgs shapes medical practice guidelines and protocols for transgender care.

Higgs said the activism being celebrated at the ceremony is rewarding but it can also lead to burnout. That makes it important to create a system that allows people to cycle out, rest and come back recharged.

“I hope to be a support and resource to any of you, whether you need somebody to help you shout from the rooftops, or if you need someone to take care of you for a little while after you've taken a break,” Higgs said.

The awards program launched in the 2007-08 academic year and is named for Chris Burnside and Sarah Weinstein, the former co-chairs of what is now Equality VCU. Josh Leidy, one of the current co-chairs of Equality VCU, said over the years the awards have recognized 59 advocates, trailblazers and champions of equality.

“To [the winners] queerness is not a limiting factor as many tell us it should be,” Leidy said. “Rather, it's a gift through which they approach their work, their communities, their relationships … they’re the ones who think critically and act boldly, questioning the status quo and building a more inclusive world in the process.”

Leidy encouraged the crowd to use the awards as inspiration to ask how members of the LGBTQIA+ community and allies could use their own unique perspectives and identities to demand more from the future.

“What new paths can we create, and how can we bring others with us on that journey?” Leidy said.