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E21: FROM THE FIVE RIVERS TO THE FIVE LAKES, FEATURING PARDEEP SINGH NAGRA

Pardeep Singh Nagra enjoys collecting antique cars and riding motorcycles.  He voluntarily serves as director of the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada and is an avid historian and artifact collector, including over 2000 Sikh toy soldiers. He also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and is committed to reconciliation.  His love of the three stripe brand and sports had led to many interesting athletic accomplishments, including being a high school tennis champion, elite ball hockey player, qualifying for the Boston Marathon, and being a National level boxer for which a Hollywood movie (Tiger) was produced based on his journey.  He is featured in many school text books and you may be interested to know he specializes in employee engagement, inclusive workplace strategies, equity, and diversity work and currently serves as a member of the senior team with the Halton District School Board as their Human Rights and Equity Advisor.

E20: The Taste of food justice, FEATURING OMME-SALMA RAHEMTULLAH

Omme started at FoodShare South Carolina in February of 2021, to build FoodShare’s regional and national coalition participation, and provide policy direction for the organization. Omme works on building advocacy and energy around state-wide policies such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) expansion and Healthy Bucks, assists regional Hubs to engage with their elected officials at all levels, and entered into the role of interim executive direction in August of 2023. Omme has 15 years of community engagement work in food security, community media policy and programming, and an academic background in cultural studies and race. Her doctoral research examined the gendered discourses of migration of Asians from Tanzania to Canada during the post-independence era.

E19: the cost of volunteerism, FEATURING FAIZA VENZANT

From a young age, Faiza Venzant's parents instilled a strong sense of volunteerism in herself and her two older brothers. They, as immigrants to Canada from Uganda in the early 70s, made a successful transition into Canadian life with the help of many generous volunteers. A volunteer herself from a very young age, she has been an advocate for volunteer engagement and excellence in volunteer management for over 20 years.  As a facilitator for the Community Action Poverty Simulation, Faiza is passionate about equity and access amongst volunteers and leaders of volunteers.

Faiza immigrated to the United States in 2021 with her family, and now serves as the Executive Director with the Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration and an active member and volunteer with Association for Leaders in Volunteer Engagement (AL!VE.) She has been a CVA (Certified in Volunteer Administration) since 2016. In 2018, Faiza published her first children’s book entitled, My Mamma Wants to Eat Me Up!  As a mother of two young boys, she has not actually eaten any of her children.

E18: developing leaders &anti-racist schools, featuring nadia BENNETT

Nadia Bennett, the founder and CEO of When Brown Girls Lead, talks about the importance of leadership in developing anti-racist educational programs and schools. This conversation dives into Nadia's lived experiences as a student, educator and black woman. It raises many questions: how we can challenge the status quo in education, create psychologically safe and brave workplaces for women of colour, and what the future of equity, diversity, and inclusion in education could look like?

With over fifteen years of experience serving school districts, Nadia Bennett has successfully overseen the processes of change management, teacher and leader coaching, diversity, equity, & inclusion and building anti-racist school environments. As a school turnaround strategist for multiple charter organizations that serve communities of color, her work has produced consistent increases in student achievement, staff retention, and college acceptance rates. Now, as an Executive Leader, she supports districts both nationally and internationally.

E17: embracing our unique healing journeys, featuring tristan mohamed

Tristan Mohamed, a qualifying registered psychotherapist and founder of Life Transitions Therapy, shares his personal journey of healing and self-discovery, as well as how he navigated his career trajectory from law to psychotherapy. In this episode, he discusses his unique approach to therapy, which combines relational embodiment and spiritually integrated psychotherapy. Tristan also explains some of the complexities of working with developmental trauma and emphasizes the need for culturally responsive understandings and approaches to mental health in communities of color. Listeners will gain insights and practical tips on how to navigate their own healing journeys and will be invited to participate in a brief but effective grounding exercise.

Tristan Mohamed is on a mission to help adult survivors of emotionally unavailable parents reignite the spark of joy in themselves, their career, and their relationships. Drawing from his own experience as a trauma survivor and first-generation Canadian growing up in a multireligious family, Tristan has learned to understand the complexity of living ‘between worlds’, and the struggles to find meaning and purpose. This personal understanding has fueled in commitment to walking alongside his clients in their unique journey of growth. Prior to embarking on his path as a therapist, Tristan left behind a successful career as a lawyer. Driven by his true calling, he delved into a journey of self-discovery, living in Buddhist monasteries around the world, engaging in therapy, and cultivating nourishing relationships that brought forth his own healing. Specializing in anxiety, depression, trauma, burnout, and spiritual distress, Tristan works at the intersection of psychotherapy and spirituality. Through an insight-based approach grounded in relational embodiment, he empowers clients to reconnect with their inner truths, forge paths aligned with their passions, and cultivate the supportive relationships they deserve.

E16: sparking hope for the next generation of women leaders, featuring narmin ismail

Narmin Ismail, the founder of The Spark of Hope Foundation, discusses her organization's efforts to empower young women in developing countries through education. In this episode, Narmin shares inspiring stories of students who pursued their academic aspirations and went on to become leaders in their fields and communities. She also explains how igniting hope in young women and investing in their education can help combat gender-based inequality, strengthen local communities and be the key to creating long-term transformational change.

Narmin Ismail partners with universities globally to attract donors for scholarships for women from the Global South, with a focus on areas of conflict. Her efforts have earned her numerous accolades, including the 2021 Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada. She is a Kenyan immigrant with a B.A. in Psychology and an MBA.

E15: empowering youth towards self-leadership, inclusion & belonging, f/ JAN FROLIC & JENNIFER JOHNSON

In this episode, Jan Frolic and Jennifer Johnson, co-founders of Captains and Poets, share their passion for social emotional learning and discuss how it can help young people develop a positive sense of agency and self-discovery. They discuss the importance of bridging the gap between social emotional learning and equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging and how systemic change can be achieved by involving all stakeholders in supporting young people. Tune in to learn more about Captains and Poets' global impact on creating safer and more inclusive learning environments, and join us as we explore how self-awareness, creativity, vulnerability, and resilience can empower young people to be their best selves!

Jan Frolic is a serial entrepreneur and a corporate leader in the Diversity & Inclusion space with a focus on gender equity. She has an Honours B.A. in Sociology and is a committed advocate and continual student in anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jan is passionate about building kids who will champion others. As a mother to three teenagers, her most important role is to raise happy, kind, self-aware kids into inclusive, socially engaged and globally aware adults.

As a parent, a former educator, an entrepreneur and a passionate change-maker, Jennifer Johnson is on a mission to empower young people to be their best selves to create a better world. She has an M.A. in Education in Curriculum, Teaching and Organizational Learning and has been a curriculum writer and designed and implemented numerous transformational programs over the span of her career. As a parent of two children, her focus is on nurturing self-leadership skills and the ability to navigate an increasingly dynamic world with compassion, resilience, and authenticity.

E14: the power of oral culture in education, featuring dr. ardavan eizadirad and dr. njoki wane

In this episode, Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad and Dr. Njoki Wane tell us about the power of oral culture in education as they launch and discuss their recent co-edited book, “The Power of Oral Culture in Education: Theorizing Proverbs, idioms, and Folklore Tales.” Dr. Eizadirad and Dr. Wane remind us why oral culture, which is often about telling stories, is a powerful and innate tool for transmitting different ways of being and knowing and facilitating anti-racist and anti-colonial community-building. In this conversation, we delve into the limitations of colonial education and suggest ways to become more inclusive of oral cultures, including those of equity-deserving, and deaf and hard of hearing communities. Tune in as Dr. Eizadirad and Dr. Wane share their insights on storytelling, as well as their favourite proverbs and how these words of wisdom guide their activist and educational work.

Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also a community activist and Executive Director of non-profit organization Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE) in the Jane and Finch community in Toronto. His research interests include equity, standardized testing, oral culture, community engagement, youth violence prevention and intervention, anti-oppressive practices, critical pedagogy, social justice education, resistance, and decolonization. Dr. Njoki Wane is a professor at the University of Toronto and currently serves as Chair in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Dr. Wane is an accomplished educator and educational leader dedicated to recognizing equity as a central dimension of good teaching, and is a recognized scholar in the areas of Black feminisms in Canada & Africa, African Indigenous knowledges, Anti-colonial and decolonizing education and African women and spirituality.

E13: radical self-love and healing, FEATURING ogho ikhalo, shelli karamath & dr. eloise tan

In this episode, we're joined by Eloise Tan, Ogho Ikhalo and Shelli Karamath as they bring together their diverse experiences as leaders and educators in the DEI space to talk about what radical self-love and healing mean for them. We discuss how, in a society that often tries to define our worth for us, practicing self-love, recognizing the importance of healing and knowing your self-worth are deeply radical acts. 

Dr. Eloise Tan is a leader with 15 years of experience working in the education research and policy space. She grounds her research, policy and co-design work in an anti-racist and anti-oppression framework and is on a journey to learning how to decolonize research and the policy development cycle. Currently, she is a Manager at the ESDC Innovation Lab where she leads an interdisciplinary team of researchers and design thinkers to co-create policy solutions with those that live on this land. Previously she was the Research Director at People for Education. She created Mama Stay Woke, a free and inclusive parenting group that centred social justice issues facing mothers. She has been a guest on CBC's The Current and Metro Morning, briefed the UN's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, guest lectured at the Maytree Foundation's Policy School and lectured at University of Toronto, McGill University, and Dublin City University. She holds a Ph.D. in Education from McGill University in Culture and Education and was previously awarded Best New Scholar in Qualitative Research from the Canadian Education Research Association. She is proud to serve on the board for the Jane Finch Centre. 

Ogho Ikhalo is an experienced leader with more than 15 years of academic and professional experience. She has an extensive background as a strategic communicator, a diversity, equity and human rights specialist, and a social justice community advocate. Prior to her current role as Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Talent Acquisition at Hydro One, Ogho served as the Director of Women’s and Human Rights at the Ontario Federation of Labour.

Shelli Karamath (she/her) is an educator for liberation, equity and inclusion. She has been a Primary/Junior educator with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) since 2008. Shelli recently completed her Master of Education in Social Justice Education at OISE, University of Toronto. Shelli currently teaches Grade 3/4 and enjoys learning with her students every day! She also teaches steel band, decolonizing music education, and leads the Equity Committee where she works with community partners towards making the school a more inclusive space. She is a professional musician of 30 years, a visual artist, and a world traveller.

E12: troubling white supremacy and allyship in education, FEATURING dr. arlo kempf

Dr. Arlo Kempf, a prominent scholar and educator in anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and critical Whiteness talks to us about the role White privilege plays in our educational system and how his background and relationship with schooling led him to study implicit race bias. He also shares strategies for how we can start to work toward dismantling White supremacy through meaningful allyship and action. 

Dr. Arlo Kempf is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT), where he teaches in the areas of race and equity in education. His sixth book, Troubling Truth and Reconciliation in Canadian Education, is co-edited by Sandra D. Styres and offers a series of critical perspectives concerning reconciliation and reconciliatory efforts between Canadian and Indigenous people.

E11: curating leadership in diversity, equity, and inclusion, FEATURING sheliza jamal

In this episode, Curated Leadership's founder and Executive Director, Sheliza Jamal, takes the hot seat to answer questions from our listeners, talk about what day-to-day entrepreneurship looks like, and debunk common misconceptions about DEI work. She delves into how her background as a theatre artist and educator eventually led her to curate unique experiences and apply them to the world of diversity, equity and inclusion.

E10: unraveling and becoming: a holistic healing journey, FEATURING JOTHI SALDANHA

Jothi Saldana is an award-winning Transformational Wellness Coach, Community Wellness Facilitator, Artist Educator and Cycle Breaker. She founded Jothi Creative Wellness Inc. in 2016 and launched a women's only wellness space called HERSpace in 2019. Jothi, along with her partner of 28 years, has two teenagers and is entering into an Elder cycle in her life after menopause. Jothi continues to expand within her healing and reclamation process and holds sacred space for others to journey through their own processes. Through a decolonial culturally responsive approach to healing and wellness, Jothi's practice centres the voices and stories of racialized folks and honours ancient healing practices. Jothi offers a magical blend of Spirituality, Creative Process, Neuro-science, and Intuitive Healing Practices within the corporate, community, women, and personal/individual spaces.

E9: unlearning school leadership, FEATURING DR. JAMEL ADKINS-SHARIF

Dr. Jamel Adkins-Sharif is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. Jamel holds an EdD in Urban Education, Leadership and Policy Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Using critical and decolonial lenses, his research explores racial and social justice, leadership, and coloniality in schools. He also serves as the Boston Director for Eskolta School Research and Design, a nonprofit engaging in culturally sustaining school transformation. Jamel has had a successful career as a special education teacher of history and mathematics in New York City, and was founding principal of both an elementary charter and a district middle school in Massachusetts.

E8: unhoused in a pandemic, FEATURING DR. NAHEED DOSANI

As a palliative care physician, Dr. Naheed Dosani is passionate about advancing equitable access to health care for people experiencing homelessness. After a transformative experience providing care to a Toronto homeless man, Dr. Dosani was motivated to develop Palliative Education And Care for the Homeless (PEACH). Based at the Inner City Health Associates, the PEACH program delivers community-based hospice palliative care to society’s most vulnerable individuals regardless of their housing status or factors such as poverty or substance use. PEACH brings housing, mental health and healthcare providers together to plan an individual’s care while recognizing, but not judging, a persons’ circumstances. This care model has inspired similar programs in cities across the continent and the development of Journey Home Hospice, Toronto’s first hospice for people experiencing homelessness, which opened in May 2018. With COVID-19, Dr. Dosani’s leadership efforts include serving as Medical Director for the Region of Peel’s COVID-19 Isolation/Homeless Program. A tireless advocate, Dr. Dosani brings attention to the correlation between health and a wide range of social issues through social media, public speaking and national media. He is also co-founder of Doctors for Defunding Police, Doctors for Justice in Long-Term Care and holds faculty appointments at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. Dr. Dosani's research interests include care models for people experiencing homelessness and access to palliative care among culturally diverse communities. Dr. Dosani has received many prestigious honours for his trailblazing work. These awards include the Meritorious Service Cross for Humanitarianism from Canada’s Governor General in 2018, a humanitarian award from the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians in May 2019 and the Early Career Leader award from the Canadian Medical Association in 2020.

E7: menstrual equity is not only a women’s issue!, FEATURING PHIL JANG

A professor in Seneca College’s Social Service Worker Program, Phil learned about period poverty in 2016 when a student, doing their practicum at a youth shelter, talked about the shelter’s lack of period products. Phil was shocked not only to find that this was the case, but that it was common across other shelters in the city. So he decided to start an initiative to supply period products to individuals experiencing homelessness in downtown Toronto. In 2017, after partnering with students Lucy Ambartsumyan, Waheeda Ali, and Hayley Mutch, Red Dot Project was born. It has since also received funding to operate an outreach van for individuals who bleed and that have moved into permanent housing. On top of period products, Red Dot Project also delivers cleaning and hygiene supplies and conducts wellness checks to ensure these individuals are not feeling isolated during the pandemic.

E6: disbility justice and accessibility in education, FEATURING ISABEL MAVRIDES-CALDERóN

Isabel Mavrides-Calderón is a 17 year-old disability rights activist who focuses her work on campaigning for policy change, anti-ableism, and accessibility. Recently she has hosted campaigns for disability rights bills with the American Civil Liberties Union and The Center For Disability Rights. She was also an accessibility consultant for The Australian Climate Strike, and is currently writing a research paper on accessibility in education post COVID-19 that she hopes to publish and use to enact policy change for disabled people in education. She loves public speaking in conferences, speech tournaments and her TikTok where she speaks about disability rights issues.

E5: unleashing your creatvity to build community, FEATURING MALLORY NEZAM

Mallory Rukhsana Nezam is a cross-sector culture-maker who loves cities and believes that we have the tools to make them more just and joyful. She specializes in public art, creative placemaking/keeping/knowing, organizational development, strategic planning, facilitation and the public domain. Through her cross-sector practice, Justice + Joy, she engages stakeholders across sectors to de-silo the way we run cities and build new models of creative, interdisciplinary collaboration. She has helped build inaugural arts & culture teams in non-arts organizations at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of Boston, Transportation for America and PolicyLink, and is the co-founder of the Civic Artist in Residence Lab (CAIR Lab). Raised in St. Louis, MO, she served as the Founding Director of St. Louis Improv Anywhere, and co-founder of the St. Louis Artivists. Through her art practice she disarms and disrupts public space norms using play and participatory performance. She holds a Master of Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and her research focuses on the racial equity impacts of artists residencies in local government. She is a 2020 Monument Lab Transnational Fellow, was a 2019-2020 inaugural Practices for Change Fellow at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute of Design & the Arts and is currently the Curator of Partnerships and Programs for FORWARD, a publication by Forecast Public Art. She seeks to be in every room she’s not supposed to be in.

E4: creating radically loving alternatives, FEATURING JAVIER DAVILA

Javier Davila (he/him) is a queer Latine award-winning educator in Toronto, with the heart of a blue whale. He aims to co-create radically loving alternatives centred in interdependence, collective care, and indisposability. He is author of several resources and programs in intersectional gender-based and sexual violence prevention, healthy relationships, and transformative justice. A Student Equity Program Advisor and educator with the Toronto District School Board for the past 16 years, he aims to centre the wisdom of QTBIPOC and disabled youth in building communities of care while addressing structural oppression head-on. He is co-facilitator of Boyoboy at Central Toronto Youth Services, a drop-in program for queer, trans and non-binary guys, a member of the Good Guise, a collective of racialized men using small, bold experiments towards abolition, and a member of the Transformative Justice Collective at Rittenhouse. He is currently writing a thesis on possibilities for justice within patriarchal masculinity and white supremacy using PODS of vulnerability, care, and accountability. You can follow Javier on Twitter: @XjusticeXpeace where he says #FreePalestine and #NoOneIsDisposable

E3: speaking truth and healing in reconciliation, FEATURING HEATHER WATTS

Heather Watts [she/her] is Mohawk & Anishinaabe from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Education has been a central part of her work over the past ten years, graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in Inclusive Education, Columbia University Teachers College with a degree in Literacy Coaching, and working as an elementary school teacher in New York City and in Rochester, NY. Heather has studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in the Education Policy & Management Program, and graduated with her Ed.M. in 2019. Heather is currently a second-year doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto, in the Social Justice Education program. She serves as an elected member of the OISE Council and sits on the Equity Committee. Heather is currently engaged in a University of Toronto Innovation Hub project that centres the voices of student-parents in higher education, works as a Training Officer of Indigenous Learning and Reconciliation at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and as an Academic Lead for the Lifelong Learning Task Force in her home community. Her research centers Reconciliation and reclamation of Indigenous ways of knowing in modern-day education systems.

E2: mobilizing community for social change, FEATURING samanta krishnapillai

Samanta founded The On Canada Project while nearing the completion of a Master's degree in Health Information Science from Western University (London, Ontario).

Her passions stem from her lived experience as a first-generation Tamil-Canadian and as someone who intentionally took time to focus on her mental wellbeing in her early 20s which fundamentally changed her perspective of the world. Sam pairs this with her education in health equity, trauma and violence informed care, diversity, and inclusion, and system change, and her professional experiences working in advocacy in University student government and community building at nonprofits, to passionately drive change.

Samanta was recently named one of Best Health Magazines Women of the Year and 2020 Health Hero, and Tamil Canadian Centre for Civic Action named her a trailblazer in their 2021 Top 30 under 30 list.

E1: the myth of the muslim monolith, WITH GUESTS GILARY MASSA, TRISTAN MOHAMED AND SHAFIK KAMANI

SheLeads Feature in the Ismaili Canada