Our Fellows

Just Futures and Flourishing leadership Fellowships 2018-2025

  • We are thrilled to introduce Louise Adongo as the  2024 Fellow of the Flourishing Leadership Fellowship. Louise is a bold, grounded, and visionary leader with over 15 years of experience in systems change, policy, and evaluation. She is the founder of Caprivian Strip Inc. (CSI) and serves as a co-steward of the Transition Bridges Project.

    Louise’s work reflects a deep commitment to untangling complex challenges and fostering shifts toward resilience, sustainability, and impact. Her belief in co-creating agile, transparent, and innovative institutional spaces underscores her approach to the reinvention required in today’s rapidly changing world—a lesson underscored by the global pandemic.

    Prior to her current roles, Louise served as Executive Director of Inspiring Communities from 2021 to 2023. In this capacity, she led efforts in Atlantic Canada to create thriving, equitable communities through collaboration, social innovation, and systems design approaches.

    With Makeway Foundation's support we had the pleasure of hosting this self-direct Fellowship for Louise Adongo, a bold, visionary leader with a deep commitment to untangling complex challenges and fostering shifts towards resilience and sustainability. 

    Through this fellowship Louise had the opportunity to reflect on her extensive leadership experiences, and explore the many facets of rest. She shares much of her journey during the fellowship as well as some of the insights and learnings from this experience in a series of Blogs published on Medium. 


    We invite you to read these Blogs here. 

  • We are delighted to welcome Miigam’agan, Elder-in-Residence with the Turtle Island Institute, as our newest fellow. Miigam’agan is a respected Elder and knowledge keeper, deeply rooted in Indigenous systems thinking and leadership. At Turtle Island Institute, Mig guides leaders through transformative processes using traditional Indigenous teachings, fostering healing and collective resilience. 


    Miigam’agan is a Wabanaki/Mi’kmaw grandmother of the Fish Clan from Esgenoôpetitj/Burnt Church. Her life has been devoted to Wabanaki cultural revival and promoting an understanding of Indigenous matriarchal systems. Miigam’agan teaches Grandmother Teachings on the stages of life on human developmental cycles, cultural history, and ceremonial roles and practices in women and men drawing Wabanaki language as references.


  • As part of the Womxn Leadership for Nature and Climate Action (WLNCA) project CKX hosted Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a climate justice activist and Founder of Sacred Earth Solar. The  Fellowship was a pivotal chapter for Melina in understanding that the burden of social injustices weigh heavily upon the bodies, minds and spirits of climate and social activist communities. During the Fellowship she was able to explore somatic therapies both in the context of self-care and collective healing and reflect on how to dismantle the entrenched cycles of harm within activist communities. 

  • CKX hosted indigenous rights activist, author, and community leader Siila Watt-Cloutier as the inaugural Just Futures Fellow. During her fellowship she juggled her usual mentorship and climate leadership engagements with public speaking engagements, including 29 keynote addresses across Turtle Island, podcast interviews and virtual presentations and panels. Not only did this work serve to further advocate for equity and justice by and for those who are most disenfranchised in our communities, it also encourages relationship-building between communities that may not usually have access to each other.

  • In partnership with the Child & Nature Alliance of Canada (CNAC), CKX hosted a two year fellowship experience for Marlene Power,  A passionate thought leader on children's mental health, and outdoor, play-based learning. The experience allowed her to deepen her practice including reflecting on class and trauma in philanthropy,  exploring the mental health benefits of outdoor play for children, and advancing the course work in her Master’s of Education at Trent University.  She continues her work today as  CEO of a new national, charitable organization called Playful Mindset. 

    During his fellowship, Luc reflected on his social interventions through Mise au jeu and established a model of the stages in turning the public into actor. In particular, he focussed on the power of play in the process. 

  • The inaugural CKX Fellow, social entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow Nadia Duguay, used her fellowship to explore how social change practices and approaches can be made more inclusive and to better understand the connections and tensions between philanthropy and social justice. Ms.Duguay co-founded Exeko, an organization  whose mission is to use creativity,  art and philosophy to promote social inclusion for people experiencing or at risk of exclusion. She continues this work today as the Executive Director of the Beatie Foundation, which supports groups in search of meaning, justice and equity, through committed, collaborative and courageous philanthropy.

Cohort X Fellowships 2019-2022

Through this experience, we supported people who embody a different paradigm of leadership in the pursuit of climate and gender justice. This work strengthened individual and collective practices, influence, and impact together.

Our Report

  • For my part, it is my deep conviction that an intersectional and decolonial feminist analysis can help reduce our blind spots and, more importantly, allow us to bring together social struggles rather than working in silos.

    Just and equitable futures are those where society is envisioned by centering the margins, creating levers that serve the whole. They are futures where human life, the living world, and the earth are valued above profit, where wealth is distributed equitably, and where societies exist without exploitation.

  • In a just future, we understand the delicate web that connects our actions to the whole, recognizing that human society is inseparable from the non-human worlds around us.

    We center Indigenous leadership and feminine wisdom. We support one another in living better lives and take a compassionate, justice-driven leap toward a new paradigm that is already within reach.

  • Just futures consider the needs of everyone in the community and are grounded in wellness and kinship.

    They are inherently decolonial, recognizing and upholding the rights and expressed demands of Indigenous peoples.

  • Just futures are shaped by future ancestors.

    To be a future ancestor means connecting with those who came before us and understanding the consequences of their actions and inactions. It also means allowing that understanding to guide our present choices, knowing that our actions will shape the lives of future generations.

    Indigenous teachings of future ancestry offer powerful ways of understanding accountability to the past and agency in shaping shared futures. My work as a future ancestor is grounded in climate justice and in prioritizing equity in both my work and my life.

  • In our Lunaapeewak creation story, we are guided to live by four laws and to always remember our place within creation, giving thanks for its gifts.

    When this worldview is understood through a decolonial lens, it begins with our womxn. In my nation, womxn were the matriarchs and leaders. Identity, lineage, and life itself were carried through them.

    Our original instructions placed womxn at the center because leadership comes from the heart and mind working together as one. When I am asked what a just future looks like, I look to our womxn.

  • As a birth worker, I believe just futures are born every day. To bring life into the world is to bring infinite possibility.

    As someone committed to justice, I see that possibility present in every moment, place, and action. Just futures emerge when these possibilities become lived realities in our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the planet.

    Like birth, creating just futures requires knowing when to push and when to breathe. Without pushing, there is no future. Without breathing, there is no life.

  • Marlene Hale is a chef, educator, and activist from the Wet’suwet’en Nation. Trained at Vancouver Community College, she has worked as a chef, instructor, and caterer, and later taught culture and cuisine in Quebec while adapting her work across cultural contexts.

    Alongside her culinary practice, she is deeply engaged in Indigenous land and environmental advocacy. Since 2019, she has supported Wet’suwet’en resistance to pipeline development and worked in solidarity with the Pacheedaht Nation to protect old growth forests. She convenes learning and action spaces and collaborates with organizations across Canada to advance climate justice and Indigenous rights.

  • Omi Rodney is a writer and artist based in Hamilton, on the territories of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

    Their work weaves stories of the Black Atlantic, with a focus on documenting the lives, art, and histories of Caribbean communities. Through their practice, Omi brings attention to cultural memory, place, and the ongoing realities of living and creating on stolen land.

    They joined Cohort X with a deep interest in storytelling, artistic practice, and collective learning.

  • Nisha Patel is an award winning disabled queer poet and artist based in Edmonton, on the territories of the Niitsítapi Blackfoot, Nêhiyaw Plains Cree, Tsuu T'ina, Métis, and Cree peoples.

    She served as the City of Edmonton’s 8th Poet Laureate and is a Canadian Individual Slam Champion. Her debut collection Coconut was published by NeWest Press, with additional collections including Not a Disorder and Patient+.

    Nisha’s work explores disability, equity, racism, and identity, grounded in her lived experience as a woman of colour navigating oppressive systems. Through her poetry and artistic practice, she contributes to building a more inclusive and connected artistic community.

  • Cúagilákv Jess Housty is a mother, writer, and land based educator from the Heiltsuk Nation in Bella Bella, on the central coast of what is colonially known as British Columbia.

    Her work is grounded in service to Indigenous youth and families in her community. She holds a leadership role with Qqs Projects Society and supports community and regional organizing for social and environmental justice.

    Jess lives in her unceded ancestral homelands, where her work and life are continually shaped by the relationships she holds with her extended family, the land, and her non human kin.

  • Elena Stoodley is a singer, author, songwriter, and sound designer based in Tio’tia:ke, on the territories of the Haudenosaunee and Kanienʼkehá꞉ka Mohawk peoples. Alongside her artistic practice, she is deeply engaged in community organizing.

    Her work brings together art and social justice, with a focus on Black liberation and intersectional practice. She studied Creative Writing and electroacoustic music and has performed internationally, including in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo.

    Elena also facilitates workshops and offers consulting on anti oppressive practices and inclusion. Her sound design work has been featured in productions such as The Mountaintop, The Rootless Tree, Manman LaMer, and Black Out, for which she received a nomination at the Montreal English Theatre Awards. She continues to develop new work across theatre and sound.

  • Adriana Laurent is a queer, mixed race immigrant from Honduras, based on the territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Tsleil Waututh, Squamish, Stó:lō, Stz'uminus, and Musqueam Nations.

    Her work focuses on the intersections of climate change, race, gender, and migration. She has been organizing across grassroots and institutional spaces, including as a co founder of the Climate Hub at the University of British Columbia and as a consultant to the City of Vancouver on the development of its Climate Justice Charter.

    Adriana has also supported international mutual aid efforts and youth led climate and abolitionist organizing. She currently works as a digital campaigner with Leadnow, contributing to movement building and advocacy across Canada.

Alan Thomas Fellows

The Alan Thomas Fellowship to Promote Civil Society and Voluntary Action was established in 2007 by the Carold Institute to develop better public understanding of the importance of volunteerism and to strengthen nonprofit leadership.

Alan Thomas was one of Canada's most influential adult educators and integral to the creation of the Carold Institute. He also authored many books in the field and was a member of the Order of Canada.

  • Alexa Conradi is an award-winning author, speaker, trainer and feminist activist. She is the author of Fear, Love and Liberation in Contemporary Québec: A Feminist Reflexion, to be published in 2019 by Between the Lines. From 2009-2015, she was president of Canada’s largest feminist organization, the Fédération des femmes du Québec. From 2006-2009, she served as the first elected president of the political party Québec solidaire. 

    After years of swimming against the current, Alexa used her fellowship to write Les angles morts: Perspectives sur le Québec actuel about the blind spots facing Quebec society regarding feminism, relations with indigenous people, systemic racism, violence against women and rising inequalities. 

  • Gaudet is the founder and artistic director of Mise au jeu, a participatory intervention theatre company. Luc’s research on the use of games and theatre as a tool for personal and social development has taken him throughout Quebec and around the world.

    During his fellowship, Luc reflected on his social interventions through Mise au jeu and established a model of the stages in turning the public into actor. In particular, he focussed on the power of play in the process. 

  • Kim Pate is mother to Michael and Madison and a lawyer and teacher by training. Prior to her appointment to the Senate of Canada, she was the executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS), a federation of societies which work with and on behalf of marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized women and girls. Kim’s fellowship allowed her to develop strategies to advance human rights advocacy with and for a population who represent the fastest growing prison population. She trained law students in prison law and human rights; community support workers in identifying and addressing reintegration needs of women in and from prison; and criminalized women in addressing human rights and women’s reintegration needs.

    In her initial Senate address she signaled her intention to continue her advocacy work. 

  • Frances Waithe is the co-founder and executive director of the Dare Every Soul to Achieve (DESTA) Black Youth Network, a community-based organization serving marginalized youth. She has spent the past 25 years working to improve the lives of the people in her neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in Montréal. 

    Frances used her fellowship to reflect on her experience and to distill the future direction for DESTA’s programming and for herself as an agent of change in her community. 

  • Nicole Rycroft is the founder of Canopy, a nonprofit that works with the forest industry to develop business solutions that protect ancient and endangered forests.

    Nicole’s fellowship project asked how successful nonprofits can most effectively scale their impact to provide positive models of change in other communities and other regions of the world. She studied for-profit franchises and licensing among numerous models to evaluate how charities could best scale their influence and effectiveness across jurisdictions, without developing large and unwieldy structures. 

  • John Cox is a community development worker living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has a long history of advocating for people with disabilities, working with the Nova Scotia chapter of People First, the oldest self-advocacy organization for people who have been labeled intellectually disabled. 

    During his fellowship, John examined the advocacy work of people labeled as having intellectual disabilities, and the influence and impact their mobilization has had on Canadian policies of inclusion. He documented the history of the People First movement in Nova Scotia and in Canada. 

  • For more than 40 years, Paula Carr has worked in the community services sector and with municipal and provincial departments, supporting leadership within local organizations in Saskatchewan and British Columbia. She is currently a health care system development agent with the Doctors of B.C. 

    In her fellowship, Paula analyzed the community development practices of Collingwood Neighbourhood House in a culturally diverse Vancouver neighbourhood. She examined its methodologies for creating socially inclusive environments and developing intercultural leadership to inform work in similar contexts. 

  • A former journalist, in 2002 Michel Venne founded the Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM), a non-partisan organization which promotes citizen participation. He is now a policy analyst and adviser. 

    For his fellowship project, he studied the role of citizen participation in the creation and implementation of social innovations, with a particular focus on the work of INM, its citizenship schools and its citizen forums. He developed many resources to illustrate the tools used to engage citizens and to generate social innovation. 

  • Peggy Edwards is a health promotion consultant, policy analyst and writer based in Ottawa specializing in issues related to aging, social justice, voluntarism and gender. She is a leader in the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, which supports African grandmothers who are raising AIDS orphans. 

    Peggy’s fellowship project looked at the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign, which is associated with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, in order to answer the question: “How do we engage, nurture and sustain older women advocates in civil society?” 

  • Vincent Greason is an adult educator who has been actively involved in grassroots community and labour organizations in Quebec and Ontario. On the board of the Ligue des droits et libertés since 2006, Vincent works at the Table ronde des OVEP de l'Outaouais, a popular education coalition in Western Québec. In 2017, he was awarded the Prix Émile-Ollivier for his lifetime achievement in advancing adult education. 

    During his fellowship, Vincent examined the role that Quebec’s community-based organizations have played, and continue to play, in the collective life of Quebec’s community movement, focusing particularly on activist groups involved in the defence and promotion of collective rights. 

  • Penny Goldsmith is a BC social justice activist who for eighteen years was the coordinator of PovNet, an online communication network and teaching tool for anti-poverty frontline workers, community advocates and poor and marginalized people. 

    During her fellowship, Penny wrote and subsequently published a graphic story entitled "Storming the Digital Divide: the PovNet Story" with artist Kara Sievewright.

    Penny has since become involved with a mental health choir. She also sings with Solidarity Notes, a choir which performs for social justice causes