A small but dedicated team of individuals committed to positive social change leads the Centre.
Staff Team
Camila Bonifaz, Community Animator, Administrative Coordinator
Camila, a native of Quito, Ecuador, adores channeling her extreme love of order into fulfilling her role as administrative coordinator and enjoys putting her Latin passion and energy to work animating the CSI community. Having earned two Master's degrees, Camila has twice the reason to appreciate working with practical-minded people to address real-world issues. Between her stints in graduate school, Camila worked for four years as a Program Coordinator for the World Resources Institute, a nonprofit environmental think tank in Washington, D.C. From the centre of the free world, she fled North in 2004 to settle in Canada, finding an ideal home at the Centre for Social Innovation.
To reach Camila, drop her an email.
Mike Brcic, Communications Evangelist
Mike Brcic likes the term iconoclast, although he's not sure what it means. Never quite satisfied with the status quo, he is now content in the company of other mavens and mavericks at CSI. In addition to his work as the communications evangelist at CSI, he is also the owner and president of Sacred Rides Mountain Bike Holidays, one of Canada's leading adventure companies (2009 "Best Adventure Companies on Earth" in National Geographic Adventure) and the founder of Bikes Without Borders, a non-profit that uses bikes and bike-related solutions as a tool for development in marginalized communities (their current project supplies bikes to HIV/AIDS workers in Malawi).
To reach Mike, drop him an email
Colleen Diamond, Executive Assistant and Project Coordinator
Without fail, Colleen receives a piece of plywood or window trim for Christmas and Birthdays every year. Her Dad thinks it's pretty darn funny. Colleen's family started a millwork and construction business in the late 1980s, and all things built have been part of her life ever since. After receiving her degree in English Literature and a certificate in Writing from the University of Western Ontario, Colleen took a position at G&P Millwork where she wrote the policies that will be used to obtain Forest Stewardship Council certification, an international certificate guaranteeing the use of verified recycled products. Determined to continue using her writing skills to promote environmentally-friendly initiatives, Colleen enrolled in Humber College's post-graduate Public Relations program. She is excited to put her training in communications and love of all things "green" to work at CSI. On weekends, you can find Colleen volunteering for the Toronto Public Library's Reading to Leading program, working on her quilt, and trying to outcook her Mom.
To reach Colleen, drop her an email
Getnet Ejigu - Community Host
Getnet came to this world in a small rural city in Ethiopia. Having completed his B.Sc. Degree in Agricultural Extension, he spent most of his time trying to change the livelihood of one farmer at a time. He spent three years at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research as a Research-Extension officer, which gave him the opportunity to promote agricultural innovations to the farming community. His restlessness and inability to settle for less pushed him to search for more. Getnet enrolled at Addis Ababa University, took off to Germany, landed in America and found his way to the Great White North. He has spent the last five months in Toronto, and enjoys the rush of city life and the diversity, innovation, and commitment to change that exists at CSI.
To reach Getnet send him an email.
Yumi Hotta - Community Animator
Yumi's never really known what to say when people ask where she's from since she's bounced from place to place for so long. She thinks it's funny that her name has given her trouble throughout her life as people in English naturally gravitate towards calling her Yummy (rather than You-me as it is pronounced) and people in Japanese can never get the spelling right as it's an uncommon spelling. However, it's always been an excellent source for conversation and laughter so she's never minded that much. Yumi's a recent graduate with a degree in Professional Writing and a certificate in Non-Profit Management. While in university, she was also heavily involved in an on-campus organization focused on events and community building. She is delighted with the opportunity to work at the CSI and to be welcomed so warmly by its community! Yumi can think of no better place to be right now and looks forward to the road ahead.
To reach Yumi, drop her an email
Valerie Hussey, Director of Social Enterprise
Valerie Hussey has hippie roots in New York in the 1960s, but came to Toronto to straighten up. After 30 years as a capitalist in the Canadian publishing industry, if that's not a non sequitur, she feels that she has reconnected with those early impulses through CSI. There were a few decades of working on nonprofit Boards along the way that kept her from being a total convert to the dark side. Perhaps it was the draw of hippie-raised Tonya that enabled her to see the opportunity to apply her business acumen to social enterprise development. Valerie is quite confident that if she could be midwife to Franklin the Turtle and the largest children's publishing company in Canada, while co-owner, Publisher and CEO of Kids Can Press, then she should be able to help spawn some innovative social enterprises while at CSI. Being a member of the dreaded Boomer generation, it has taken her a very long time to realize that all she really wants to do is have fun, and CSI is a great place to do that.
To reach Valerie, drop her an email.
Eli Malinsky, Director, Programs and Partnerships
Eli prefers the cause of helping other people’s causes, which he supposes has now become his own cause. He started thinking this way in his mid-twenties when he gave up his lavish lifestyle to toil away in the research program at Imagine Canada, a national nonprofit agency. This was followed by a return to school where Eli was reunited with his first love – receiving A’s from approving teachers. Eli used his time at school to explore how networks of activists and nonprofits use technology to work together. When he graduated, he found a perfect home at the Centre for Social Innovation, where he oversees programs and strategy, and where Tonya indulges him with quarterly report cards. Eli is both a dog and cat person and isn’t sure why it’s always one or the other.
To reach Eli, drop him an email.
Tonya Surman, Executive Director
Raised by hippies, Tonya Surman has been making peace signs and raising a ruckus since the day she was born. Her most recent ruckus is the Centre for Social Innovation. As founding executive director, Tonya imagines the Centre as space that sparks creativity, connectedness and fun. Before this, she channeled her overzealous optimism into a national coalition of organizations working on children's environmental health, a social enterprise offering e-mail to activists and an edgy online news hub for Canadian progressives. Between these experiments in social entrepreneurship, Tonya has found the time to create a coop daycare, host chaotic street parties and create community gardens. She is also the mother of two wonderful boys which, in the end, is what matters most.
To reach Tonya, drop her an email - full cv here
Board of Directors
Alice Klein
Named in 2000 as one of the 100 Graduates Who Shaped the Century by the University of Toronto Alumnae Association, Alice Klein is co-founder of Toronto's news and entertainment weekly, NOW magazine and its editor/CEO. Launched in 1981, it boasts a weekly readership of 325,000. As a frequent writer, Klein draws on her experience in politics, business and psychology to focus on issues related to world evolution, the environment and the global economy.
Klein is also a documentary producer, director and writer (2007's Call of the Hummingbird). She's a founding member of Green Enterprise Toronto (GET), one of the co-creators of VoteforEnvironment.ca and on the Board of the Toronto Arts Council (TAC) and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) as well as the Centre for Social Innovation.
Eric Meerkamper, Board Chair
Eric is a partner in DECODE, a research, strategy and innovation firm focused on understanding and engaging youth, young adults and young families. Over the past number of years, Eric has been actively involved in facilitating the interaction between "space" and "creativity". In addition to being a Co-Founder of the Centre for Social Innovation, he was the Founder and President of the Spadina Bus business association, and was also on the Leadership Team for Toronto's "Strategies for a Creative Cites Project". Eric is currently the Chair of the Daily Bread Food Bank. Eric holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Business and Honours BA in International Political Science from the University of Western Ontario.
Founding Board Member 2004 - present
Jini Stolk, Treasurer
Jini Stolk is the Executive Director of Creative Trust, a six-year sustainability program to assist Toronto's mid-sized music, theatre and dance companies. Jini was Managing Director of Toronto Dance Theatre between 1994 and 2000; before that she spent 10 years as Executive Director of the Toronto Theatre Alliance. She has also served as Associate Director of the Association of Canadian Publishers and General Manager of Open Studio. She is a committed and an effective art advocate, having received the Sandra Tulloch Award for Innovation in the Arts in 2004, and is President of the Board of hum dance, member of the board of Toronto Arts Council, and Past-President of Artscape.
Founding Board Member 2004 - present
Sandy Crawley, Board Member
Sandy Crawley is a lifelong Arts Activist and, as the erstwhile Executive Director of the Documentary Organisation of Canada/ Documentaristes du Canada, he was also the first tenant of the CSI. Among his many roles, Sandy has been President of the Alliance of Canadian Radio and Television Artists (ACTRA), director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts for Film and Broadcasting, Chair of the Cultural Human Resources Council, delegate to UNESCO Conference on the Status of the Artist, 1996, Executive Director of Canadian Screen Training Centre, and a Board member of the Great Canadian Theatre Company and Word-On-The-Street Ottawa. Behind it all, Sandy has been self-employed as an actor, composer, musician, writer, teacher and director for over 35 years.
Founding Board Member 2004 - present
Margaret Zeidler, Board Member
Margaret Zeidler is president and creator of 401 Richmond Limited, a vibrant urban community of diverse artists and entrepreneurs, located in the old garment district in the Spadina and Richmond area of downtown Toronto. Margie was formally trained as an architect at the University of Toronto and the University of Westminster, and subsequently worked for a number of years with the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), raising money and monitoring projects in eastern Africa. Margie has served on the Board of Artscape and is a current board member of Foodshare/Field to Table. Margie is currently the President of Urbanspace Property Group.
Co-Founder and Founding Board Member – 2004 - present
Brian Iler, Board Member
Brian brings valuable skills and experience to our board.
As a commercial lawyer for the past 35(!) years, he's advised many of Toronto's (and Ontario's) co-operative, charitable, and non-profit organizations on a wide range of issues and transactions. He's been the creative legal mind behind many of our innovative social enterprises.
He's learned and applied the business skills required to build his law firm - Iler Campbell - to its current twenty staff, including seven lawyers.
And he's a committed community activist, as a member of Ontario Non-profit Network's Expert Working Group on corporate law reform; a long-time advocate for reforms to Ontario's Co-operative Corporations Act; a founder of Toronto Renewable Energy Co-operative that erected the wind turbine at Exhibition Place; a founding director of the Community Power Fund, established to finance community-based renewable energy projects; a member of the management committee for the hugely successful Green Energy Act campaign; chair and spokesperson for CommunityAIR that campaigns to rid Toronto's waterfront of the scourge that is the Island Airport.
Thursdays all summer, he'll be out racing his sailboat Indefatigable
on Humber Bay.
Past Board Members
Jacline Nyman, Board Member
For more than fifteen years, Jacline Nyman has built an impressive track record in the fields of marketing higher education and business strategy. As a management consultant, Jacline works with social mission organizations on strategic business planning, in addition to pursuing doctoral studies at the Schulich School of Business, York University. Prior to this, Jacline was vice-president of fundraising and donor relations with the York University Foundation (2002-04) and director of external relations for the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary (1999-04). Jacline has also held the following positions: Director of Development with the University of Calgary (1997-99); Director of Advancement Services (1994-97) and Manager of Student Recruitment, both with the University of Ottawa (1992-94).
Board Member 2005 - 2008
Mary Rowe, Board Member
Mary W. Rowe has assumed the position of Vice President for Program in March 2007, following eighteen months as Senior Urban Fellow with the blue moon fund. Mary's fellowship focused on self-organization in cities as the underpinning of urban resilience, with New Orleans, Charlottesville (where the fund is based) and New York City as case studies. Now a member of the blue moon staff, Mary is charged with developing an urban program that reflects the values of the fund, specifically fostering the diversity of urban responses to change, and the connections that bridge them. Prior to joining the blue moon fund Mary was Director of Toronto-based Ideas that Matter, a convening and publishing program based on the work of Jane Jacobs.
Founding Board Member 2004-2006
