OUR MOVEMENT
Our Evolution
In 2014, the Department of Imaginary Affairs started with a question: What would it look like if the government ran with as much imagination as young people have?
That was a time when we thought the work would be about finding shiny solutions and staying focused on the positive possibilities. We were so wrong – and we’re grateful to have grown from that place.
From 2017 – 2021,
we built our foundation through storytelling and storylistening. We started with The Stories of Us – Canada’s first-and-only English-learning library full of stories by Newcomers for Newcomers. We collected over 150 stories, in over 20 languages – which continue to be available on our website and digital archive. We partnered with Living Hyphen to create a multilingual magazine, filled with 60 stories, in 15 languages. We believed that if we could just share enough stories, if we could just get the right people in the room, change would follow. We weren’t wrong about the power of stories. We were naive about how much more the work would ask of us.
Through 2021 – 2022,
we reflected on what was missing from our work and how we wanted to integrate our knowledge and experience as systems thinkers, futurists, researchers, designers and facilitators. We started asking harder questions: not just what futures do we want to imagine but who is imagining futures now, who gets to benefit from existing systems and structures, and what has to die for something new to live?
We discovered we belonged in the in-between spaces—between research and strategy, between present reality and future possibility, between individual reflection and collective action.
In 2023,
we recalibrated. We named our five core values: Story, Care, Humility, Risk, and Abundance. These weren’t aspirational—they were honest about what the work actually required of us.
In 2024 – 2026,
we allowed ourselves to slow down and listen. We watched our partners enduring sector-wide shifts. We experienced the abrupt ending of equity work we’d helped steward. We deepened our understanding of how colonization—from Turtle Island to Palestine and beyond—shapes everything we do. We committed to right relations, to gathering collective wisdom, and to remembering that we thrive when our relationships thrive. We named core skills we believe we need to practice to get to better worlds: Telling the Truth, Weaving Micro and Macro, Holding & Metabolizing Contradictions and Practicing Curiosity.
Approaching 2027,
we’ve learned that imagining equitable futures is a recurring loop of care and grief. When we care enough to imagine something different, we must also grieve that we don’t yet have it—and may never see it in our lifetimes.
We’ve stopped looking for the next shiny solution. Instead, we’re practicing the futures we wish existed—through how we show up in partnerships, how we design our offerings, and how we navigate the contradictions of working within systems we’re trying to dismantle.
The question that started it all still gnaws at us—just in a very different way now.
We’re no longer asking what if government had more imagination? We’re asking: What does it mean to practice collective liberation when the systems around us see it as a threat? How do we hold complexity without collapsing? How do we keep going when the path isn’t clear?
This evolution isn’t linear. It’s iterative, messy, and ongoing—just like the work itself.
Our Vision
We imagine worlds where people are able to tell the truth about their lived experiences, remain in relationship across difference, and practice care without collapsing into performance, extraction, or domination.
We believe better worlds are not abstract futures to be designed from a distance. They are practiced, moment by moment, through how we listen, gather, tell stories, and make meaning together.
Our Mission
Department of Imaginary Affairs (DIA) is a storytelling organization and movement-rooted lab that creates Invitations to Better Worlds.
Through stories, installations, gatherings, research, and learning experiences, we help individuals, communities, and institutions build the skills needed to stay present, honest, and connected within complexity, especially in moments where existing systems are breaking down.
Our Approach
We work at the intersection of imagination and action—bringing together participatory research, foresight practices, systems thinking, and anti-oppression frameworks to help partners understand not just what is happening, but why, and what it might mean for where you’re going.
We hold the micro and the macro together. We connect lived experience to structural patterns, individual stories to systemic change. We honour the wisdom people carry while acknowledging the larger forces shaping our lives. This means we’re always asking: what lies beneath the surface? What are the root causes? And how do we address them while caring for the people most impacted?
We belong in the in-between spaces. Between research and strategy. Between present reality and future possibility. Between individual reflection and collective action. We’ve learned that the most generative work happens when we’re willing to sit with complexity, hold contradiction, and navigate discomfort with care.
How we show up
How we show up
We value showing up over showing off. This work requires humility, honest reflection, and a willingness to model what we ask of others. We’re generous with our lessons learned and our perspectives. We don’t pretend to have all the answers—instead, we create conditions for shared discovery.
We design processes that leave people feeling seen, not extracted. Whether we’re doing research, facilitating a workshop, or coaching a leader, we care deeply about how people enter a process, what they’re carrying, how they’re invited to participate, and how they leave. We integrate care-based relational practices into everything we do because how we work matters as much as what we produce.
We bring comfort to uncomfortable conversations. We’re known for holding space where hard things can be named and explored—conversations about power, privilege, colonization, and systemic harm. We create enough structure to scaffold safety while leaving enough openness to be present to what emerges. We prioritize relational depth over content delivery.
What we bring
What we bring
Research grounded in participation and justice. We draw on participatory methods that centre the voices of those most impacted by systems of oppression. We understand that research isn’t neutral—so we name our positionality, interrogate our assumptions, and build processes designed to redistribute power, not reinforce it.
Strategy as storytelling and navigation. We see strategy as a key tool in how you tell your story and navigate uncertainty. We bring foresight and scenario planning into the strategic process, helping teams see beyond the immediate horizon. We use world-building and futures-thinking not as abstract exercises, but as practical tools for getting aligned on where you’re going and why.
Facilitation that guides us toward equity. We bring training and experience in Art of Hosting, Liberating Structures, anti-oppression frameworks, co-design, and participatory engagement. We integrate equity and decolonization practices throughout. We model what it looks like to hold space with both rigor and care.
Coaching rooted in inner wisdom. Our coaching is grounded in care, connection, and conversation. This is not prescriptive coaching—we don’t tell you what to do. Instead, we connect you to your own clarity and work alongside you with boundaried care and modeled humility.
Professional development that goes beyond good intentions. We weave together conceptual depth, lived experience, practical application, and embodied practice. We respond to burning questions and create space for emerging ones. We believe we cannot achieve equitable futures without moving beyond good intentions into honest reflection about how we show up—as individuals and within systems.
Community of practice built on relational depth. We design gatherings with care and intention, nurturing the relationships that are the bedrock of collective liberation. We create conditions and rituals for the kind of honest, curious presence that makes real connection possible.
The tools we use
The tools we use
We combine foresight, world-building, artifact-making, systems thinking, scenario planning, human-centred design, and immersive experience design to make futures feel not just possible, but plausible. We build collaborative, participatory, provocative processes that invite partners and communities to pause, reflect, and respond to what’s right in front of them.
We help build shared skills and language around scanning environments, assessing resources, and evaluating the patterns, conditions, and trends shaping our futures. We navigate complexity with curiosity, aiming to integrate equity into every element of our partnerships, processes, and products.
What grounds us
What grounds us
We acknowledge that equitable futures work has been happening throughout human history and will continue long after we’re gone. This work is intergenerational, intersectional, and intentional. We recognize the value of urgently addressing harm while intentionally focusing on what is possible in the present to build toward the futures we’re imagining.
We learn by doing—not just talking about systems and services, but practicing them. We commit to naming what lies beneath the surface, addressing root causes, and showing up with both urgency and care.
What We Practice
Our work is shaped by four core skills that are both essential to the worlds we’re building and existential threats to the worlds we’re actively letting go of.
These aren’t theories we teach from a distance. They’re practices we live inside of—messy, ongoing, and necessary. Every project, partnership, gathering, and engagement we facilitate is an invitation to practice one or more of these skills together.
We don’t claim to have mastered them. We claim commitment to them.
Telling the Truth
What it asks of us
To name what is actually happening—in our bodies, relationships, institutions, and systems—even when doing so is inconvenient, risky, or scary.
Why we resist it
It’s uncomfortable. It disrupts belonging that’s been built on performance or silence. Truth-telling can cost us access, funding, relationships, and safety. It asks us to risk the very things we’re taught to protect.
What it offers us
Telling the truth is liberating. It is an act of integrity. It creates the conditions for real relationship and real change.
When we practice truth-telling in our work, it might look like:
- Naming power dynamics in the room before we start facilitating
- Writing research reports that don’t sanitize what communities actually said
- Acknowledging in strategy sessions that the plan might fail—and planning for that too
- Saying out loud that a funder’s requirements are causing harm
- Admitting when we don’t know, when we messed up, or when we’re scared
Truth-telling doesn’t mean being harsh or careless with people’s dignity. It means refusing to let politeness, professionalism, or fear keep us from what’s real.
Holding & Metabolizing Contradictions
What it asks of us
To remain present when multiple, seemingly opposing truths exist at the same time.
Why we resist it
There is no clear answer. It challenges binary thinking and certainty. We live in a world that rewards quick decisions and clear sides. Contradictions feel like confusion, like we’re doing it wrong.
What it offers us
This practice increases our capacity to feel more, not better. It allows us to take embodied steps toward futures capable of holding complexity without collapse.
Contradictions are everywhere in this work:
- We imagine equitable futures while grieving that we don’t have them yet
- We work within systems we’re trying to dismantle
- We need resources from institutions whose logics we oppose
- We care deeply about outcomes while knowing we may never see them
- We center youth and Newcomer voices in organizations that weren’t built for them
In our facilitation, coaching, and partnerships, we practice staying present to all of it. We don’t resolve contradictions prematurely or pretend they don’t exist. We learn to metabolize them—to let them move through us without hardening into cynicism or naivety.
Weaving the Micro and the Macro
What it asks of us
To attend to our embodied, personal experiences while connecting them to broader systems, histories, and power dynamics.
Why we resist it
It can feel overwhelming, too complex, or irrelevant. We’re taught to keep the personal separate from the structural. To focus on solutions, not stories. To move fast, not sit with how things landed in our bodies.
What it offers us
This practice is fortifying. It helps us stay in the fight by understanding that there are many fronts and that none of them exist in isolation. When we connect the micro to the macro, we see that our exhaustion isn’t personal failure—it’s a predictable outcome of under-resourced systems. We understand that one community’s struggle is connected to another’s.
In our work, this might look like:
- Starting a strategic planning session by asking people what they’re carrying in their bodies today
- Building scenarios that connect individual migration stories to policy shifts and global displacement patterns
- Designing research that honors lived experience as data while mapping structural conditions
- Holding space in professional development for people to name how white supremacy shows up in their workplaces and in their nervous systems
We practice moving between the intimate scale of how it feels and the systemic scale of why it’s happening—and we refuse to privilege one over the other.
Practicing Curiosity
What it asks of us
To stay open—to ourselves and to others—even when we feel triggered, defensive, or certain.
Why we resist it
Curiosity can feel like granting legitimacy to harm or losing ground in a fight that matters. When we’re certain we’re right, curiosity feels like weakness.
What it offers us
Curiosity preserves our humanity. Listening does not mean agreeing. It means staying in relationship without abandoning ourselves.
In practice, this looks like:
- Asking “what else might be true?” when we’re sure we have the answer
- Getting curious about our own resistance before we judge someone else’s
- Designing research and facilitation that genuinely wonders what participants think, rather than confirming what we already believe
- Staying in conversation even when it’s hard
- Returning to questions instead of rushing to solutions
Curiosity is not passive. It’s an active choice to remain relational even when it would be easier to shut down, write someone off, or perform certainty.
These skills don’t make the work easier. They make it possible.
They’re what allow us to keep going when the path isn’t clear, when resources are scarce, when systems push back, and when our own limitations show up.
We practice them imperfectly. We fail at them regularly. And we keep returning to them because we believe they’re how we get to the futures we’re imagining—together.
Our Values
In 2023, we named five core values: Story, Care, Humility, Risk, and Abundance.
These are not the values that come easiest to us. They’re the ones we have to work at practicing—the ones we can easily have too much or too little of. Our work is finding balance, navigating hard conversations, and sitting in the tension when these values conflict with one another.
Each value matters on its own. But the most important work often happens at their intersections—or when they’re pulling us in opposite directions and we have to choose how to move.
Story
We believe in the power of stories to change our perceptions of reality. We seek ways to create space for stories to be told and shared in pursuit of collective liberation.
Stories aren’t decoration. They’re infrastructure. They shape what we believe is possible, who we see as credible, and what futures we can even imagine.
In our work, this means:
- Designing research processes where storytelling isn’t extraction—it’s co-creation
- Building partnerships where narrative power belongs to the people most impacted
- Creating artifacts, installations, and immersive experiences that make alternative futures feel real, not abstract
- Centering the voices of Newcomers and Youth whose stories are systematically left out of policy and program design
We practice Telling the Truth through story. We don’t sanitize what communities say to make it palatable for funders or institutions. We honour the complexity, contradictions, and hard edges of what people actually experience.
We practice Weaving the Micro and the Macro by connecting individual narratives to systemic patterns—showing how one person’s migration story is shaped by global displacement, policy decisions, and historical power dynamics.
Care
We believe how we connect and respond to one another is the greatest way to build and maintain the trust needed to dismantle systems of oppression.
Care isn’t soft. It’s structural. It’s about designing processes, relationships, and spaces where people are held—not extracted from, rushed through, or left behind.
In our work, this means:
- Facilitating with attention to how people enter a space, what they’re carrying, how they’re invited to participate, and how they leave
- Building coaching relationships grounded in boundaried care, not prescriptive solutions
- Integrating care-based relational practices into strategy work so that how you build reflects the culture you’re trying to create
- Prioritizing relational depth over content delivery in our Community of Practice gatherings
We practice Holding & Metabolizing Contradictions through care. We care enough about people to stay present when things get messy, when multiple truths exist at once, and when there’s no clear answer.
We are Practicing Curiosity as an act of care. Staying open to someone and ourselves — even when triggered — is how we preserve humanity and relationships.
Humility
We believe that acknowledging we are stronger together than apart—and that no easy answer will solve the problems we’re facing—is one of the first steps toward building equitable futures.
Humility means we show up as practitioners, not experts. We’re in the work with you, living in the same complexity, making mistakes, and learning alongside you.
In our work, this means:
- Modeling what we ask of others—we would never ask you to do something we’re unwilling to do ourselves
- Naming our positionality, power, and limitations
- Designing facilitation and coaching that connects people to their own inner wisdom rather than positioning us as the ones with answers
- Being generous with our lessons learned while acknowledging we’re still figuring it out
We are Practicing Curiosity through humility. We stay open because we genuinely don’t have it all figured out.
We practice Telling the Truth about our own uncertainty, our failures, and the times we’ve caused harm.
Risk
We believe we must challenge perceptions of safety and security and push beyond our individual and collective comfort to secure belonging and inclusion for everyone.
Risk means we’re willing to name what’s uncomfortable. To facilitate conversations we tend to avoid. To write accountability statements when things go wrong. To ask for what we need even when it might cost us the contract.
In our work, this means:
- Bringing comfort to uncomfortable conversations about power, colonization, and systemic harm
- Choosing solidarity and resistance over approval
- Building partnerships oriented around redistributing power, not just delivering services
- Creating provocative, participatory processes that invite people to confront what’s right in front of them
We practice Telling the Truth through risk. Naming what’s real—especially when it’s inconvenient, risky, or scary—is how change happens.
We practice Weaving the Micro and the Macro by connecting our personal fears and institutional pressures to the larger systems that create them—and choosing to move anyway.
Abundance
We believe scarcity mindsets cause us to operate from fear rather than love. We must complicate colonial structures and characteristics of white supremacy that reinforce hierarchies and competition.
Abundance means we refuse to hoard knowledge, gatekeep access, or compete for scraps. We build partnerships where everyone gets stronger. We share what we’re learning. We design offerings that don’t require people to prove they deserve care.
In our work, this means:
- Approaching coaching and professional development as collective knowledge-building, not individual advancement
- Designing Community of Practice spaces where relationships are the work, not a byproduct
- Working with organizations to build internal capacity rather than creating dependency on us
- Seeing research as a collective resource that builds wealth and alternative futures
We practice Holding & Metabolizing Contradictions through abundance. We hold the tension between needing resources to survive and refusing to let scarcity logic dictate how we move.
We are Practicing Curiosity by believing there’s enough—enough ideas, enough wisdom, enough possibility—that we don’t need to defend our position or shut others out.
How They Work Together
These values don’t exist in isolation. The most generative work happens at their intersections:
- Story + Risk = Truth-telling that disrupts dominant narratives
- Care + Humility = Relationships built on mutual learning, not hierarchy
- Abundance + Risk = Choosing solidarity even when resources are scarce
And the hardest, most necessary work happens when they conflict:
- When Care asks us to slow down but Risk demands we act now
- When Humility says “we don’t know” but Story requires us to name what we see
- When Abundance invites openness but Care requires boundaries
We don’t resolve these tensions. We practice navigating them—imperfectly, honestly, and together.
Meet the Staff
Our Team
We are practitioners, not consultants in the conventional sense.
We don’t show up with pre-packaged frameworks or claim to have solutions you don’t. We show up as people actively in the work—living in the same complexity you’re navigating, practicing the same skills we’re inviting you to practice, and genuinely curious about what might become possible when we work together.
We are facilitators, researchers, strategists, coaches, artists, and storytellers.
We bring training and experience in Art of Hosting, Liberating Structures, participatory research, foresight and scenario planning, systems thinking, equitable design, anti-oppression frameworks, and care-based relational practice. But more importantly, we bring ourselves—our questions, our lessons learned, our commitments, and our willingness to stay in the discomfort alongside you.
We are people who are used to seeing things from the margins. We bring our lived experience with us.
We carry the stories of displacement, migration, survival, and adaptation. We understand what it means to live between worlds, to hold multiple truths at once, and to build futures while grieving what we’ve lost. This lived experience shapes how we show up in partnerships, how we design research, and what we believe is possible.
We are rooted on Turtle Island.
Our work is shaped by this place—its histories of colonization and resistance, its communities of Newcomers and long-time residents, its ongoing struggles for housing justice, migrant rights, and collective liberation. We work locally and we think systemically, understanding that what happens here is connected to what’s happening everywhere.
We bring creative and strategic practice in equal measure.
We’ve built immersive futures experiences, co-designed world-building exercises, developed participatory installations, facilitated difficult conversations, coached leaders through transitions, conducted multi-year research initiatives, and created programs that didn’t have a template before we made them. We’re as comfortable holding a governance retreat as we are building an interactive artifact of 2036.
We model what we ask of others.
We practice Telling the Truth about our own limitations and positionality. We Weave the Micro and the Macro in our work—connecting personal experience to structural patterns. We Hold Contradictions without collapsing. We Practice Curiosity even when we’re certain. These aren’t skills we preach from a distance—they’re what we’re actively working on, every day.
We are committed to showing up, not showing off.
We value depth over performance, relationships over transactions, and learning over certainty. We’re generous with what we know and humble about what we don’t. We root for you. We believe we can go further together than we can apart.
We are small by design.
This allows us to move with intention, to say no when partnerships aren’t aligned, and to prioritize the quality of relationships over the quantity of projects. It also means we’re selective about the work we take on—and when we commit, we’re all in.
Jennifer Chan (she/her)
Founder, CEO & Story Caretaker
Jenn is second-generation Chinese-Canadian, a Mama, a partner, a friend, a daughter, a sister, a struggling idealist, a pandemic-induced extroverted introvert, and a recovering perfectionist aka super Virgo.
Jenn is second-generation Chinese-Canadian settler, born and raised in Tkaranto. She is the eldest daughter to immigrants from Hong Kong, she is a Mama and partner to her high school sweetheart. She is a fiercely loyal friend, a Double Virgo and navigates the world with ADHD.
As a serial idea generator and starter, she has been an entrepreneur since she started a babysitting business while trick-or-treating at 13. Before Jenn co-founded DIA, she had been working in the nonprofit sector since 2007 and before that she didn’t even know the sector existed.
Jenn finds joy in bouncing between multiple crafty hobbies at the same time, she likes to learn about and engage in long conversations about tarot, astrology and how fascinating the universe is, she is really extroverted up until she realizes her social battery is drained and then she needs to run away, she gets bored easily and really likes run-on sentences.
Morgan Bath (she/they)
COO
Morgan Bath grew up in a hamlet of fewer than 150 people in southern Alberta on Treaty 7 territory. Often the only kid in town, they learned early to follow curiosity as both companion and compass.
Having moved over thirty times since age fourteen, Morgan lives within the tensions of belonging and displacement. Their work is shaped by a commitment to building the community and steadiness they once lacked, cultivated through slowness, thoughtfulness, and care.
As a transdisciplinary designer, facilitator, and systems thinker, Morgan thrives at the intersection of creativity and structure. They build spreadsheets, manuals, and systems not just for efficiency, but for the relief and accessibility they bring. The first in their family to attend post-secondary, they value knowledge as something to be shared and made usable. Morgan aims to brings warmth, curiosity, and steadiness to everything they do, trusting that curiosity will always lead somewhere worth going.
Mathura “Temwa” Mahendren (she/her)
Story Caretaker, Minister of Memes & Meditation, previously Program Manager of The Stories of Us
Mathura is a storyteller by nature and design researcher by nurture. As the daughter of asylum-seeking refugees fleeing state-sanctioned genocide in Sri Lanka, now residing on stolen land on Turtle Island, the desire to reconcile the dissonances within her lineage often manifests in her work.
Her parents’ love survived oceans of distance across indefinite periods of time, the poverty of starting anew in a foreign land, and the sudden and premature loss of their firstborn, and she is intimately aware of the ways in which our ability to move through difference, discomfort, grief, change, and growth is deeply intertwined with how and how deeply we were taught to love. To that end, love is both the method and the madness that underpins all of her bodies of work.
Her practice is rooted in a commitment to designing and sharing tools, frameworks, and brave spaces that can hold relationships through difference, discomfort, grief, change, and ultimately, growth.
Meet the board
Our Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors doesn’t just govern—they practice alongside us.
They bring deep expertise in nonprofit leadership, community organizing, systems change, arts and culture, and lived experience as Newcomers, racialized leaders, and changemakers navigating the same contradictions we hold in our work.
More importantly, they share our commitment to the messy, necessary work of collective liberation. They challenge us to stay true to our values when it’s hard. They hold us accountable to our communities. They help us navigate the tension between sustainability and integrity, between what funders want and what’s actually needed.
Our Board meetings aren’t just about governance compliance—they’re spaces where we practice telling the truth, holding contradictions, and building the relational infrastructure that makes transformation possible.
They don’t just oversee our work. They believe in it, root for it, and help us stay grounded when the path isn’t clear.
Trevor Haldenby (he/him)
President and Secretary
Trevor Haldenby is an imaginative Canadian futurist with 20 years of experience in strategic foresight, business innovation, and digital storytelling. He leads by transporting knowledge and ideas across different domains — from immersive experience design to strategic challenges spanning high-tech, life sciences, and social innovation.
Trevor’s graduate research at OCAD University (2012) demonstrated the value of adapting scenarios and trend forecasts into immersive ByoLogyc experiences where people emotionally and intellectually “prehearse” the complex decisions they could face in various futures.
He has been a special keynote presenter at TED, CBC, Autodesk University, 21st Century Ideas Festival, and Ars Electronica. Professionally, he has held titles including Interactive Producer at Canadian Film Centre (2004), Habbo Hotel (2006), and Earth Rangers (2008); Director of Business Transformation at Syntegrity (2017-2021), Facilitator with SURGE, and Principal at Wierd(A)dvisory.
Jenn is the CEO & Co-Founder to the Department of Imaginary Affairs and now on our Board of Directors. Jenn’s extensive background designing, developing and implementing participatory and co-design based programming within the nonprofit and social innovation sector has given her a unique set of skills to lead this organization.
Jennifer Chan (she/her)
Staff Member
Alicia Richins (she/they)
Treasurer
Alicia is a climate justice advocate, sustainable impact strategist and writer, called to imagine beyond the plausible. She is the founder of The Climateverse, a transformation lab and multimedia studio focused on radically imagining and co-creating climate just futures. There, she leverages storytelling and futures methods to articulate and inspire action towards better futures for all.
As a consultant-facilitator, they help organizations and community groups to develop futures-oriented impact strategies and systems, and to unpack the intersecting issues of climate, social and economic justice, in order to navigate challenges while building towards their desired futures (outcomes).
A proud Trinbagonian-Canadian, her offerings are underscored by her active engagement in the youth climate movement in Canada and across the Caribbean, as well as her graduate education and research in ecological economics, international development and urban planning.
Mia George is a strategist with over a decade of public sector experience in project management, communications, and strategic planning. She is a published author and a designated Project Management Professional, Program Management Professional and Certified Professional in Talent Development, in addition to being a Registered Yoga Teacher, Aromatherapist, Real Estate Agent and Travel Agent. Her MDes research in Foresight and Innovation at OCAD explores how to bridge the gap between personal and community flourishing. Mia has found foresight at the intersection of her passions for learning, public service, and innovation and is interested in how futures techniques can be used to benefit communities. Today, her mission is to democratize futures work through integrating personal and community futuring, empowering individuals and enhancing collective well-being.
Mia George (she/her)
General Member
Hanifa Kassam (she/her)
General Member
Hanifa Kassam is Senior Advisor, Community Benefits at ALTO, where she leads the development and delivery of transformative community benefits strategies across the high-speed rail corridor. In this role, Hanifa works in close partnership with communities, and diverse stakeholders to create equitable opportunities and lasting local legacies for economically disadvantaged and equity-deserving populations.
Hanifa’s commitment to community and social impact is longstanding. She previously served as President of the Laidlaw Foundation and as Vice Chair of Scarborough Arts. Raised in Scarborough, she continues to call Toronto home with her husband and two children.
Since 2014, Hanifa has worked for the City of Toronto. She began as a Community Health Officer with Toronto Public Health, collaborating with community members to address population health issues in Neighbourhood Improvement Areas. In 2016, she joined the Poverty Reduction Office (PRO) as a Community Development Officer, where she was instrumental in launching the City’s Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) and spearheaded numerous cross-corporate collaborations. Her mandate expanded in 2019 to include oversight of inclusive economic development activities—such as AnchorTO—and advancing research and programs in community wealth building. In 2020, Hanifa transitioned into a Policy Development Officer role within PRO, shaping citywide strategies for poverty reduction and economic inclusion.
Prior to her work with the City, Hanifa built a strong foundation in the non-profit sector, overseeing programs dedicated to newcomer and settlement services, gender-based violence prevention, and youth engagement. Her career spans direct service delivery, public policy, and philanthropy, united by a focus on advancing social equity and empowering communities.
Transparency & Reports
We believe transparency is essential to trust and collective care.
Annual reports
Land Acknowledgement
The Department of Imaginary Affairs is situated on the land and waterways of the Mississaugas of the Credit, who are part of the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Wyandot, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy of Six Nations, and many other Nations—recorded and unrecorded—covered by the Williams Treaties. This territory has known human activity for thousands of years, long before it was ever called Canada.
We also recognize the contributions and experiences of people of African descent, particularly those forcibly brought to this land through the transatlantic slave trade.
This territory exists within the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant—an agreement created pre-European contact between the Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee nations to emphasize living in peaceful coexistence with all people, the land, and the resources. At its heart is the image of a single dish holding all the bounty, and one spoon to draw from it. The agreement asks that everyone take only what they need, always ensuring something is left for those who follow.
This covenant remains in effect. We are all responsible to live by these terms.
Many Indigenous Peoples refer to North America as Turtle Island. The story of Turtle Island is one of identity, belonging, origin, and being connected to the land we live on. In this narrative, the world was once entirely flooded. While many animals tried—stronger and braver animals—it was Muskrat who dove to the bottom of the great sea and gave their life for a single bit of mud. It was Turtle who offered their back for the land to be formed.
As an organization deeply invested in dismantling systems of oppression, we are committed to deepening our understanding of the histories of this land, the lands we are from, and how we can show up in alignment with our ancestors and future generations.
We recognize the humility required to examine our conditioning and to not shy away from feelings of guilt, shame, and discomfort that pull us back toward the status quo. In our work of understanding our roles and responsibilities as caretakers of the land, we work to recognize the ways we have been colonized—and can therefore be decolonized.
“Decolonization is not a label that can be attached to pre-existing social justice strategies in the hope of absolving non-Indigenous organizers of guilt.”
— Dismantling Colonialism, Building Understanding, Mosaic Institute
We see each land acknowledgement as an invitation—to reflect on where we are in our own journeys toward reconciliation and to demonstrate our commitment to being the change we want to see.
This is ongoing and active practice, not performance.
Read our full solidarity statement
Solidarity Statement
In our pursuit of equitable futures, we hold the tension between the idealism of what we want to exist in the world and where we are today.
We imagine futures where nobody is given more love, or is at greater risk of harm, based on the color of their skin, where they are from, what language they speak, what religious beliefs they hold, who they love, how they look, or how they navigate the world.
“No one is free until everybody’s free.” — Fannie Lou Hamer
We know this is not the world we live in today.
We recognize that saying we stand in solidarity with others is not the same as actually doing the work to dismantle the systems of oppression that strengthen and reinforce inequities.
We understand the deep responsibility of being in good relations—especially with Black and Indigenous communities—requires trust, patience, reciprocity, and humility.
“Solidarity is an uneasy, reserved, and unsettled matter that neither reconciles present grievances nor forecloses future conflict.”
— Decolonization is not a Metaphor, E. Tuck & K.W. Yang
Our Commitment
Through this solidarity statement, we commit to recognizing how we show up as individuals and as an organization in the work of imagining equitable futures. We dedicate a portion of our resources to continuously learning, unlearning, and relearning what it means to strive for equity.
We challenge our colonial conditioning to perform perfectionism in the work of solidarity. We practice releasing ourselves from the characteristics of white supremacy that harm us all.
We choose to be in solidarity and resistance with Indigenous and Black communities—not just in words, but in action, resources, and how we navigate the complexity of this work.
In the past year, we have continued to navigate our ongoing and ever-evolving stories about how we show up, especially in ways that challenge the status quo and may put us in destabilizing positions.
This is especially true when so many see collective liberation as a threat to existing systems of power and privilege.
So we have a choice to make on how we show up.
We choose solidarity. We choose resistance. We choose to keep practicing, even when it’s uncomfortable, risky, or scary.
What This Means in Practice
- We tell the truth about colonization’s ongoing harms and our complicity in them
- We weave together our personal responsibilities with the systemic patterns that shape this work
- We hold contradictions: gratitude for being on this land and grief for how we came to be here; urgency to act and patience to build trust; commitment to outcomes and acceptance that we may never see them
- We practice curiosity about our own conditioning, resistance, and the ways we can show up differently
We honour and acknowledge the endurance required to stand up for what we believe in and to chart a path toward equitable futures. We encourage and invite our peers within the nonprofit sector to do the same.
This is ongoing work. We reflect on it regularly on our blog at #thisisimaginationatwork.