Seher Shafiq: 2019

Seher is deeply passionate about community building, shifting narratives, and building an inclusive democracy. Seher currently works at North York Community House as the Active Citizenship Manager, where she is co-designing new civic engagement programming that will be adopted by settlement agencies across Canada.  Since April, Seher has also been working as a Managing Editor for Ryerson’s new First Policy Response initiative, which seeks to feature policy ideas that will get us through the COVID-19 crisis and to a fair and sustainable recovery. 

In 2019, Seher led the country’s very first national nonpartisan voter engagement campaign out of Ryerson’s Democratic Engagement Exchange. As part of this campaign, Seher travelled coast-to-coast to deliver voter engagement training to community-based organizations across the country and convened the Canadian Vote Coalition, the first campaign of its kind. Seher was also a Community Mobilizer, Executive Director and Board Member for the Canadian-Muslim Vote (TCMV), a non-partisan organization which seeks to educate Muslim community members about Canadian democracy and the importance of civic literacy and engagement.

Seher's other experiences include running a leadership development program (DiverseCity Fellows) at CivicAction, working in the refugee and resettlement sector at Lifeline Syria, and working at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In her free time, Seher produces and hosts a podcast called The Second Generation, which highlights experiences of second generation immigrants/millennials.