About Us

Courage to Act is a federally funded, multi-year national project. Led by Possibility Seeds, it builds on key recommendations within their landmark report, Courage to Act: Developing a National Framework to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence at Post-Secondary Institutions.

The first national collaborative of its kind

Together with a team of experts from across the country, we develop tools, conduct research, and share resources and strategies to address and prevent gender-based violence at post-secondary institutions in Canada.

About POSSIBILITY SEEDS

Courage to Act is led by Possibility Seeds, a Canadian social change consultancy dedicated to gender justice and equity. With over 20-years of experience working with community organizations, governments, private and public institutions, we care deeply about the impact of our work. We were founded on the core belief that positive change is possible. 

Meet our Team

  • Farrah has spent two decades working to raise awareness about the connection between equity and gender-based violence through education, resource creation, and project management. She’s worked for 7 years in frontline sexual violence support at post-secondary institutions, is the founder of Possibility Seeds Consulting, and is a member of the Government of Canada's Federal Strategy Against Gender-based Violence Advisory Council. Farrah is the recipient of numerous awards including the Toronto Community Foundation’s Vital People Award.

Farrah Khan (she/her)
Executive Director

  • Emily is a communications specialist, copywriter, and editor who has been engaged with feminist research and non-profit work for the better part of a decade. She holds a double BA in Anthropology and Political Science, and an MA in Sociocultural Anthropology, from the University of British Columbia; and has served on the board of the Association for Feminist Anthropology since 2018. Emily is also a creative nonfiction author and fat-positive activist whose work appeared in Caitlin Press’ BIG anthology, a Spring 2020 BC Bestseller; and will be featured in an upcoming Fat Studies in Canada reader with Inanna Publications.

Emily Allan (she/her)
Communications Manager

Noémie Veilleux (she/her) Francophone Project Coordinator and EL Research Assistant

  • Noémie is a bachelor's degree student in sexology at the University of Québec in Montréal. Formerly a national student leader, she worked to address and prevent sexual violence in higher education through her various involvements within organizations, intersectoral tables and research committees. Noémie contributed to the deployment and revision of the Quebec government strategy aimed at countering sexual violence. She works within the Chaire de recherche sur les violences sexistes et sexuelles en milieu d'enseignement supérieur and offers training on sexual violence, as well as on the legal and institutional obligations of higher education settings in Québec.

  • Amal is a Senior Equity Advisor on Gender and Sexual Violence Prevention and Support at Carleton University. She has spent several years working and volunteering in community organizations focused on gender equity, community development, and social justice. Amal is currently an Advisor for the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women's Black and Racialized Caucus. She is also the Vice-Chair of the Girls on Boards Steering Committee with Fora, Network for Change, a program dedicated to placing young leaders on non-profit boards across Canada. In her spare time, she loves to travel, go on hikes, and enjoy a warm cup of coffee at her favourite cafes.

Amal Elmi (she/her)
Response & Support Co-Lead

  • Anoodth Naushan is a researcher, policy analyst, educator, and skilled problem-solver who finds joy in supporting people and projects to advance gender, racial and economic justice. Anoodth holds a Masters in Social Policy and Social Research, and has worked at the intersection of program, policy and campaign design, resource mobilization, and community capacity building for over a decade. Anoodth honed her skills at METRAC, the Schlifer Clinic and Queen’s University in Canada before working internationally within the UK post-secondary sector. Compassion, curiosity, collaboration, innovation, and equity are at the heart of her work.

Anoodth Naushan (she/her)
Project Director

  • Kitty is passionate about marketing, community building and all things design. An avid collector of information, they are driven to connect people with affordable resources and caring support. They are a multidisciplinary artist and a lifelong student of anti-oppression work, creating safer spaces and design for social change. Kitty is a member of the Community Resistance Intimacy Project (CRIP) Collective, providing disability justice education and training. They have also organized art events with the Non-Binary Colour Collective, a community for 2SQTBIPOC creatives in the Greater Toronto Area, and recently completed the Toronto Artscape Foundation Launchpad Bursary Program with a focus on graphic design and creative entrepreneurship.

Kitty Rodé (they/them)
Graphic Designer

  • Laura Murray is a settler working and living on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Leni-Lunaape Peoples. She holds a double BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from Western University.

    She worked and volunteered at community organizations supporting individuals and families who experienced gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and human trafficking.

    Laura is passionate about creating safer and inclusive communities, where people thrive in healthy relationships built on connection, vulnerability, and growth.

Laura Murray (she/her)
Project Coordinator

CJ (they/them)
Project Advisory Committee Co-Lead

  • For over two decades, CJ has been working to develop educational campaigns and research projects that critically engage with such issues as transgender justice, LGBTQ2S youth leadership, gender-based violence prevention and trauma-informed services. Presently, CJ is the Director of SFU’s Sexual Violence Support & Prevention Office where they work with a team to support individuals impacted by sexual violence and sexual misconduct, develop sexual violence intervention and prevention educational campaigns, learning opportunities and initiatives and works closely with the University to implement and operationalize policy. CJ is a past co-Director with the Courage to Act project.

  • Maya is a HR professional with experience in recruitment, employee engagement and operational effectiveness. She has led employee resources groups on gender equity and facilitated workshops, mentorship initiatives and campaigns on career development, confidence and motivation. Maya is the Art Gallery of Ontario’s volunteer president, where for more than 10 years, she has brought people together to see, experience and understand the world through art.

Maya Koltarenko (she/her)
Operations Manager

Andréanne St-Gelais (elle/she/her)
Experiential Learning Project Coordinator

  • Andréanne est directrice du Collectif social, un organisme à but non lucratif qui a pour mission de développer et de soutenir les initiatives communautaires ou sociales qui répondent aux besoins des communautés étudiantes des établissements d’enseignement supérieur. Une bonne partie de son travail consiste à mettre en place et à déployer des mesures de sensibilisation face à la violence sexuelle et genrée qui sont efficaces et fondées sur les données probantes les plus récentes et les meilleures pratiques en la matière. Originellement issue du milieu de la santé, elle possède une maîtrise en physiothérapie ainsi qu’en administration publique et a combiné des études en relations publiques, science politique et science économique. Depuis plus de cinq ans, elle oeuvre au quotidien à la prévention et à la sensibilisation face aux violences sexuelles et genrées, et ce, autant au Québec que dans le reste du Canada. Elle a notamment contribué au déploiement de Sans oui, c’est non !, la toute première campagne nationale de prévention sur cette question au Québec. Elle vit et travaille à Tiotiá:ke (Montréal), historiquement connu comme lieu de rassemblement pour de nombreux peuples des premières nations.

Aubrianna Snow (she/her)
Stakeholder Relations Specialist & Advisory Committee Co-Lead

  • Aubrianna Snow (she/her) is a k'taqmkuk lnu'skw visitor in Treaty Six, and has lived here for most of her life. Graduating from MacEwan University’s Bachelor of Communications program in Spring 2022, gender-based violence prevention and community building are passions she’s had the privilege of exploring during her time in postsecondary. During her second term as Vice President Student Life at the Students’ Association of MacEwan University (SAMU), Aubrianna founded the Student Voice on Violence Elimination Committee as a means of advocacy to SAMU and to University administration. Prior to her time as an elected student leader, Aubrianna volunteered as a MAVEN Peer Educator on consent and sexual violence with MacEwan’s Office of Sexual Violence Prevention, Education, & Response.

Laxana Paskaran (she/her)
EL Project Research Assistant

  • Laxana recently completed a Masters of Education in Social Justice Education with a collaborative graduate specialization in Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto. She has experience in research, policy analysis, and program management. She has previously led action-oriented human rights and social justice projects at The Leacock Foundation, U of T’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre, and the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research.

Britney De Costa (she/her)

Reporting, Investigations & Adjudication Working Group Co-Lead & EL Project Lead

  • Britney is a settler living and working in Thadinadonnih, or “the place where they built,” territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. She is a researcher and policy analyst who holds a Master of Social Work and a Master of Laws from the University of Windsor where she learned from students, community advocates, and critical scholars who informed her approach to systemic, community-led advocacy. Britney brings experience working for poverty reduction, disability justice, and access to education, and most recently worked at the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance as staff support for student leaders advocating for safe and accessible post-secondary education in the province. Britney is passionate about gender justice and brings experience from her time as a student advocate educating others and raising awareness of the prevalence of gender-based violence on campuses and in the community. Her work with Courage to Act focuses on creating safer, trauma-informed complaints processes and addressing the gaps that make students vulnerable to sexual harassment in experiential or work-based learning.

Dr. Jesmen Mendoza (he/him)
GBV Community Risk
Assessment Project Co-Lead

  • Dr. Jesmen Mendoza has been registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario since 2008. He’s provided counselling and psychotherapy services since 1999 on a range of issues, and in a variety of settings. He is located at TMU’s Centre for Student Development and Counselling where he provides therapy to university students, training to psychology practicum students and consultation to faculty and staff on tricky issues. Prior to TMU, he has provided services in a number of social service and criminal justice settings, and applies an integrated, inclusive and positive psychology approach to all of the clinical and community work he delivers.

  • Rebecca is a lawyer practising on the traditional unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin People. Her experience lies in the areas of criminal law, administrative law and civil litigation. Rebecca assisted with research for Achieving Fairness: A Guide To Campus Sexual Violence Complaints by Karen Busby and Joanna Birenbaum (published by Carswell in 2020) and has been researching and writing in the area of campus GBV since 2019. In 2021, she won a D.A. Thompson Q.C. Prize in Law and the J.S.D. Tory Writing Award for her work, Procedural Fairness, Survivor Centrism and the Sexual Violence Complaint Process at Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions. In her spare time, she enjoys recipe development, hiking, Pilates and spending time with her ragdoll cat, Mochi.

Rebecca Akong (she/her)
Consultant

Dr. Sandy Jung (she/her)
GBV Community Risk
Assessment Project Co-Lead

  • Dr. Sandy Jung is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 territory, also known as Edmonton. Sandy maintains an active research program that focuses on the prevention of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and risk assessment and management, and is funded by both internal and major external grants. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications in the field of forensic psychology, often co-authored with her students and several of her collaborators in law enforcement, forensic mental health, and other academic colleagues nationally and internationally. She regularly teaches abnormal, forensic, and clinical psychology, and actively provides supervision of honours and advanced research students. She has been awarded teaching and research awards by her institution and external academic associations. She serves on the editorial board for the journals, Sexual Abuse and Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention.

  • Dr. Sandy Jung is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 territory, also known as Edmonton. Sandy maintains an active research program that focuses on the prevention of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and risk assessment and management, and is funded by both internal and major external grants. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications in the field of forensic psychology, often co-authored with her students and several of her collaborators in law enforcement, forensic mental health, and other academic colleagues nationally and internationally. She regularly teaches abnormal, forensic, and clinical psychology, and actively provides supervision of honours and advanced research students. She has been awarded teaching and research awards by her institution and external academic associations. She serves on the editorial board for the journals, Sexual Abuse and Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention.

Leon K. (they/them)
Web Designer

  • Salina is a sociologist and consultant specializing in social justice research, education and evaluation. Her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto focused on the intersections between precarious immigration status and gender-based violence. As an evaluation consultant, Salina supports feminist and migrant rights organizations to integrate evaluation using trauma-informed, intersectional, and participatory approaches. As a scholar and educator, Salina has published nine research studies on citizenship and migration, gender-based violence, and social justice activism in scholarly journals like Citizenship Studies, Signs, Social Politics, and Studies in Social Justice. For the past decade, she has also been an active organizing member of the Rights of Non-Status Women Network, a grassroots education and advocacy network based in Toronto.

Salina Abji (she/her)
Evaluation Consultant

  • Zoie Haider (she/her) is a freelance digital illustrator and graphic design student. Much of Zoie's work is inspired by her experience navigating life as a queer Pakistani and what it means to create space and advocate for oneself amid heteronormative systems and social norms. She is passionate about creating representational art that aims to center marginalized folk paired with themes of queer joy, empowerment, positivity, dismantling the gender binary, and (self) compassion. Some of her past work include resources for queer Muslim youth such as "I am Muslim and I Might Not Be Straight" by Advocates for Youth, as well as illustrations for French feminist magazine, Deuxième Page.

Zoie Haider (she/her)
Graphic Designer

  • Co-chairs:

    CJ Rowe (they/them) - Simon Fraser University 

    Aubrianna Snow (she/her) - Possibility Seeds

    Members:

    Brenda Austin-Smith (she/her) - University of Manitoba/Canadian Association of University Teachers

    Graham Carr (he/him) - Concordia University

    Sandrine Desforges (she/her) - McGill University 

    Dee Dooley (she/they) - St. Mary’s University

    Lise Gotell (she/her) - University of Alberta

    Radhika Gupta (she/her) - University of Toronto

    Bronte Ibbotson (she/her) - University of Toronto

    Chloe Kemeni (she/her) - McGill University

    Alannah McKay (she/her) - University of Manitoba

    Janet Morrison (she/her) - Sheridan College

    Tara Paterson (she/her) - Canadian Union of Public Employees

    Kharoll-Ann Souffrant (she/her) - University of Ottawa