In this episode I speak with Delilah Agho-Otoghile, an Organizer, Political Strategist and Co-Founder of VoteSimple, a Texas based digital voter registration organization focused on registering young voters of colour and LGTBQ+ Texans. Delilah previously worked as State Director for Beto for America and Field Director for Stacey Abrams for Governor. Her work is dedicated to ensuring our democracy truly reflects progressive values and the striking diversity of her country—the United States. In these times of change and unrest, how do we meet potential voters where they are? How do we ensure everyone’s vote is counted? How do we illustrate that a movement born in the street must continue on the ballot and in the courts to effect lasting change? Delilah shares her insights garnered from years of experience on the ground mobilizing voters to show up for democracy.

Design Influence

Episode VII—It starts with the people

In this episode, I speak with Mica LeJohn. Mica is a writer, technologist, and educator, and the CEO and co-founder of 2SWIM, a social messaging app with an emphasis on close connections and private communities. 2SWIM will be for everybody but is currently invite-only for POC-, LGBTQ+-, and/or womxn-centric communities, creators and brands (and their allies).  How have online communities changed in the light of the COVID-19 crisis?  How can we reimagine these virtual communities to moved them from being spaces for performance to spaces for engagement?  Can social networks generate value for users instead of extracting it?

Episode VI—Reinventing social networks

In this episode, I speak with Sean Condon, Manager Director at 312Main, a Vancity Community Foundation project in Vancouver's Downtown East Side, about his hopes for this project which reclaims a building heavy with our colonial history.  What happens when we open up avenues and physical spaces for dialogue, when we invite community and indigenous organisations to co-habitate and inspire each other? How do models of social enterprise come into play in addressing some of societies most blatant inequalities?

Episode V—Reclaiming Spaces

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gavin Armstrong, Founder and President of Lucky Iron Fish Enterprise, a Canadian social enterprise tackling the issue of iron deficiency with a simple health innovation.  I was in Lima supporting startup ecosystem builders and taking part in a training day for micro, small and medium enterprises. THE MSME event, organized by the Asia Pacific Foundation and Global Affairs Canada, featured a talk by Gavin.  I met Gavin a year ago in Toronto and it felt like a small world to meet again in Lima. Over and over what came up in conversations that day was how difficult it can be to measure and express the multi-faceted performance of a social enterprise. Gavin seemed like a perfect candidate to dig deeper into that topic. So what is it that makes the story and mission of Lucky Iron Fish Enterprise so compelling to partners, stakeholders as well as customers and beneficiaries? What ingredients does a social enterprise need to thrive?

Episode IV—Lessons from the Lucky Iron Fish

In this episode, I speak with Sean Harvey, Founder of Sympónia Men and Co-Founder of GenderArc.  As a writer, speaker, and consultant he is exploring new narratives around gender balance in organizations to transform people, cultures, and systems. In a time that seems to favour headlines over dialogue and shouting over listening, Sean is trying to build bridges. How can we tame language to weaken the extremes of the gender binary? How do we facilitate compassionate conversations? And when and how do we even create space for them to occur?

Episode III—The gender arc

In this episode, I speak with Dara Parker, Vice President of Grants and Community Initiatives at Vancouver Foundation, about the social profit landscape as she sees it.  What happens when the private and third sectors meet? What does collaboration mean for not for profits and how does social entrepreneurship fit in all of this?

Episode II—The complexities of systems change and collaboration

In this episode, I speak with Keith Ippel from Spring Activator about ways of defining social entrepreneurship and how this way of doing business can fulfill its promise to make the world a better place.

Episode I—The Promise of Social Entrepreneurship

Conversations about redesigning the world through entrepreneurship, philanthropy and new collaborations.

Hello! This is Design Influence

What if we could redesign the systems that don't work? Design Influence is about exploring how we can use business and design to reimagine the world’s constructs. In other words it’s about adventures in entrepreneurship, philanthropy and innovation.

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Design Influence

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