As a founding member and creative director, Kayam leads the overall project vision and objectives. From user experience design to brand messaging, to the organizational development, he brings a creative approach to civic engagement.
Kayam has over 10 years of experience working within the Communications and Information Technology industry, he is an advisor and mentor for startups and entrepreneurs in the Toronto area.
Richard represented the Green Party on three occasions as a candidate during the 2006 Federal, 2007 Provincial, and 2008 Federal elections. His experience in the political arena has led him to believe that although elections may be the fundamental element of Democracy, the opportunity to participate in your government is the spirit of Democracy.
As a Co-Founder of CitizenBridge, Richard is now working on making democratic participation much more convenient and engaging by giving the public an environment where they can be active participants WITH their government, instead of just being passive observers of their government.
Inderpal is one of the founding members and brings to CitizenBridge her experiences in logistical planning, organization, coordination, and operational excellence.
Inderpal is a digital media specialist and stays actively involved in the community advocating for women and youth engagement, participation and leadership. She has been a founding member and a board of director of a children’s charity, Guru Gobind Sing Children’s Foundation, as well as for Safar, Sikh Feminist Research Institute. She is presently involved with Nach Balliye, The Tobago Center and Roots of Empathy.
Matthew is the lead architect and developer responsible for the overall technology development at CitizenBridge.
As one of Toronto’s InDesign User Group chapter representatives, Organizer of the HTML5 Toronto Web Application Developer Group as well as being a key component of the Toronto Social Media Café, Matthew spends much of his time delving into new technologies in order to find innovative solutions for what he calls “Creative Problems”.
Anita is a public relations, social media, and civic engagement specialist.
The core of her experience lies in government and media relations, branding, and event coordination. She has previously held roles as Vice-President of Academics and Equity for the University of Toronto at Mississauga Students’ Union, and Communications Associate and Head of Social Media at the political, non-profit organization Student Vote.
During her time at Student Vote, Anita was responsible for initializing and managing organization engagement across various education demographics, from students to teachers to school boards, as well as liaising with stakeholders and government officials in an effort to increase civic literacy among Canadian youths. Anita is now a member of the Outreach Team as well as Social Media Lead for CitizenBridge.
Ric is an experienced marketing individual whose career has included strategic planning, program development, communications, advertising, promotions and event management. He has worked in the charitable and private sectors; managed non-unionized and unionized staff and is able to work in Canada and the United States.
Previous positions have included Marketing and Communications Director for the Canadian Harley-Davidson distributor (Recognized as one of “Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies;” 100% increase in revenue over nine years), Director of Development for Oxfam Canada (35% increase in revenue over three years) and Director of Fundraising for the Kidney Foundation of Canada (50% increase in revenue over seven years). He is currently self-employed and providing marketing and communications consulting to the private and non-profit sectors.
With an extensive history of knowledge and experience in technological, cultural and societal trends, along with a high degree of creativity and the ability to effectively communicate with a wide variety of individuals and organizations, makes him a great asset to the CitizenBridge team as a Director of Business Development.
Although he may be a software consultant and architect by trade, Khurram likes to consider himself as a social entrepreneur with a huge interest in applications that bring about social change.
With a particular passion towards problem solving and product development, he has successfully lead a number of enterprise-based applications that have delivered agile products for consumer-based transactional web sites such as AirTransat and Bell.ca.
This, along with his profound knowledge of technological strategy and scalable operations, have led him to become Co-Founder of Vizualize.me. He is now an integral member of the CitizenBridge Technology team where he is able to apply his skills towards the growing GOV 2.0 movement and help build CitizenBridge into a successful platform.
Davy Sohi has worked in numerous industries, in a variety of technical positions, where he developed a diverse repertoire. Through his experiences bridging the gap between business and technical teams he has gained knowledge and insights into multiple areas including management, marketing, sales, technology and finance. He has worked on 3 continents, managing technical implementation projects with budgets of up to $1.5 million.
With his relocation to Toronto in 2009, he changed gears and launched an events management and communications company. Here he has managed campaigns and events for startups, corporates and non-profits. In 2010, he was awarded with the member of the year award for his volunteer work as Chair of Events at the Indo Canada Chamber of Commerce.
His diverse skillset is now being put to use at CitizenBridge, as part of the communications team.
George Zamfir is an IT accessibility consultant and passionate advocate for inclusiveness on the web. As an accessibility professional he understands the legislative and technical requirements of a web project. Working alongside many private, public, and not-for-profit organizations, he has created accessible products and services that all users, regardless of the ability or disability, can use equally.
He spent much of his university years conducting research at the Ryerson University Centre for Learning Technologies in the field of disability & inclusive media. His work and studies resulted in an undergraduate thesis of mixed research & development of a sign-language authoring for people who are deaf – www.signlinkstudio.com
Following his time at Ryerson, he also started his own web development business working with different clients and agencies in the GTA area. He has planned, designed, coded, and maintained various web projects and is now lending his experience and abilities as a member of the CitizenBridge Technology Team.
