Andre Williams
Steering Committee liaison
Program hubs
Focused on our core areas of operations, the program hubs play a key design and decision making role to ensure that our activities and outputs stay on track.
Members' role
Each program hub consists of four to six members of the SHIFT community. Members are recruited on an annual basis or as needed.
- Hub members: Provide input, give feedback and approve major strategic decisions related to the program area. Hub members contribute actively to the success of the program area according to the skills and expertise they bring to the group (e.g. facilitating connections through their networks, on-boarding new hub members, conducting research, etc.)
- Steering Committee liaison: Holds the same decision-making authority as other hub members, but has the additional responsibility of acting as an information conduit between the Steering Committee and the Hub.
- SHIFT staff member: Holds the responsibility of driving forward the operational component of the program area, bringing questions of strategic importance to the hub, and providing relevant information to other hub members. Acts as liaison with the SHIFT staff team to ensure coherence between program areas at an operational level.
Ecosystem Activation Hub
The Ecosystem Activation Hub identifies and facilitates opportunities for mutually beneficial collaborations between SHIFT project teams and relevant actors within Concordia and Montreal's broader social transformation ecosystem. Hub members leverage their expertise and networks to guide the development of the SHIFT ecosystem, seize partnership opportunities, and jointly make decisions about the scale and nature of SHIFTS' investment in these partnerships.
Barbara Saldana
Project team initiator, Rooting for Each Other
Erika Munoz
Affiliate facilitator at the Centre for Community Organizations
Akina Matsuo
SHIFT staff, Ecosystem Activation
Elisabeth Cramer
SHIFT staff, Social Innovation
Fund Disbursement Hub
The Fund Disbursement Hub ensures that SHIFT’s funding opportunities act as efficient mechanisms to identify potential partnerships with promising initiatives, and provide ongoing support to members of the SHIFT Learning Community. Members contribute their expertise and perspectives to increase accessibility and transparency of SHIFT’s funding processes and evaluate their effectiveness.
Alysha Maxwell-Sarasua
Project team member, Black History Matters
Duha Elmardi
Community organizer
Florencia Vallejo
Steering Committee liaison
Léandre Nawej
Philanthropy and youth mentorship
Richenda Grazette
SHIFT staff, Funding and Evaluation
Participatory Governance Hub
Governance Hub members are passionate about how healthy organizational processes and decision-making structures can contribute positively to social change. Their work is focused on ensuring that SHIFT’s governance model is of greatest possible benefit to our mission, and on sharing what we’re learning at SHIFT with others interested in the transformative power of alternative governance systems.
Cheryl Gladu
Researcher in dynamic governance systems
Kristen Young
Project team member, Peer Support Groups
Marc Lachapelle
Concordia lecturer, Social Innovation
Stephanie Childs
SHIFT Staff member, Shared Power & Community Engagement
Marina Guimaraes Correia
Concordia Student and Project team member, CP3
Shawna Moore
Steering Committee liaison
Collaborative Space Hub
The Collaborative Space Hub is tasked with enabling a dynamic and welcoming space for the SHIFT community and the broader social transformation ecosystem. Together, members of the hub make decisions to ensure that the space becomes a shared resource for the community, provides programming with opportunities to deepen engagement with SHIFT, and contributes to the collective learning about the potential of collaborative spaces.
Zakiyyah Boucaud
Concordia student, welcoming space practitioner
Hannah Ostiguy Hopp
Research assistant on Concordia student food insecurity
Aseema Kabir
Concordia staff member, Project team support, Listener’s Training
Emma Harake
SHIFT staff, Events and Space
In their own words
“Community leadership is essential for SHIFT to achieve its goal of social transformation. By connecting the university and its many resources to community workers and community members who are making change happen, SHIFT is strengthening the relationships necessary to enact positive change not only for the Concordia community, but for Montreal at large.” Kristen Young
“Community leadership allows for a plurality of perspectives and approaches to co-exist in ways that all members of the SHIFT community can greatly learn, grow and benefit from. Through a sustained engagement with this complexity and by cultivating spaces for dialogue and collaboration across differences, SHIFT can bolster a supportive infrastructure that amplifies the strengths and accounts for the needs and well-being of all its current and future stakeholders.” Amanda Vincelli (2021-2023)
“Community leadership requires the ability to listen, step back and understand where there are gaps that need to be filled. It’s necessary that community takes the lead in SHIFT’s decision-making because we are the ones who understand where there is need and how best to address that need.” Rain Hye (2021-2023)
“Social change is not a spectator sport. For people who are keen on active approaches to problem-solving, there must be a direct engagement with those impacted by an issue in the process of change. Citizen control is the most active form of participation; community leadership in an organization like SHIFT is imperative to moving away from tokenistic forms of engagement.” Cheryl Gladu
“I've always been passionate about resource distribution, and how it can be made as accessible, equitable, and reach those who have been (and continue to be) excluded from "traditional" philanthropic structures. Because SHIFT is led by volunteer community members from all different backgrounds of experience - both professionally and personally - we are able to work together towards those goals while learning from each other and being open to constant change.” Richenda Grazette
“My vision of social transformation is one that is rooted in the creation and cultivation of collectively led spaces that recognize and value differences, foster empathy and solidarity, and facilitate mutual aid and community care. Social transformation is not an end point. It is an active, deliberate and collaborative practice of complex negotiations amongst diverse actors, humans and non-humans, to design systems and create a world together where we all have access to what we need to live well and thrive.” Amanda Vincelli (2021-2023)
“My vision of social transformation looks like no policing, no prisons, no carceral systems. It looks like interdependency, a word where disabled Black, Indigenous and racialized queer/trans people are the experts of our own conditions, ways of being, and of how to care for one another. My vision of social transformation is one in which racial capitalism does not dominate our minds and ways of relating to one another.” Rain Hye (2021-2023)
“For social transformation to stick, there has to be freedom to explore vastly different approaches, while having a shared understanding of the collective impacts of our actions and seeking solutions to mitigate these as well as we can with current knowledge.” Cheryl Gladu
“SHIFT's approach to social transformation is a fluid state with no end point, in which those living in communities are the ones who dictate where we go next and how. Lateral or bottom-up, collaborative approaches to change that aren't restrained by quantitative measurements or strict requirements.” Richenda Grazette
