Soundwaves of Belonging

with Christa Couture, Author and Award-Winning Musician

Christa Couture is an award-winning performing and recording artist, filmmaker and broadcaster as well as recent author of the debut memoir How To Lose Everything. She is also proudly Indigenous (mixed Cree and Scandinavian), queer, disabled, and a mom. Over the course of her acclaimed career, Christa has become known, unenviably, as an expert in loss: singing, speaking and wr...

With Mark Shapiro, President and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays 

Mark Shapiro is currently the president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays . He formerly worked with the Cleveland Indians from 1991 to 2015, beginning in player development and ending as team president. 

In this episode Mark and I talk about how connection underpins any form of learning, including and especially about racial and other forms of injustice.  We talk about t...

Julie Diamond is an executive coach, leadership consultant, and creator of the Diamond Power Index, a Myers Briggs-type assessment on a leader’s use of power.  She’s worked with organizations around the world from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies, labour unions to NGOs. Her book, Power: A User’s Guide, is a handbook for using power effectively and ethically, no matter what role you’re in.

In this episode, Julie and...

with Amanda Leduc, Author and Disability Rights Advocate

Amanda Leduc is a disability rights advocate and author of Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in Non-Fiction. 

In this episode we discuss perceptions of disability all the way back to Darwin, and how fairy tales—our basic origin stories—offer fertile ground for re-imagining disability and "disf...

Jerry Colonna is previous chair of the Naropa Institute in Colorado and CEO and co-founder of Reboot.io, an executive coaching and leadership development firm.  He is the author of the ‘Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up’  and the upcoming ‘Reunion: Leadership and the Longing to Belong’. Prior to his career as a coach, he was a partner with JPMorgan Partners (JPMP) and co-founded New York City-based Flatiron Partners, one...

with Jo Vannicola, Emmy-Award Winning Actor and LGBTQ2S+ Activist

Jo Vannicola is an Emmy award-winning actor, writer, and advocate. They are the founding chair of the LGBTQ2S+ committee at ACTRA Toronto, and sit on the sexual assault ad-hoc committee for women and gender-diverse people in film and television. Jo is also the author of also just penned an award-winning memoir All We Knew but Couldn’t Say describing a lifelong journe...

with Judy Rebick, Award-Winning Author, Feminist and Public Commentator

Judy Rebick is a seasoned feminist who was a leader in the pro-choice struggle here in Canada. She was President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women from 1990-1993. She’s hosted her own political debate show with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as well as continuing as a regular media commentor on feminist and social justice issues. Ju...

with Jenna Butler, Award-Winning Author

Jenna Butler is a mixed-race (South-Asian/British) Canadian writer whose latest Book Revery: A Life of Bees was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. Jenna lives on a farm outside of Edmonton, Alberta and just came out of a long bout of fighting cancer—in the middle of a pandemic.  

In this episode, Jenna and I talk about what it means to find a sense of belonging to the la...

On Purpose: Learning to Listen to Life: with Parker J. Palmer, Educator, Author and Founder of the Centre for Courage and Renewal.

Parker Palmer is a spiritual giant in the leadership and education field, founder of the Centre for Courage and Renewal and authors of ten books that have sold over 2 million copies, including one of my absolute all time favourites: Let your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. He holds a Ph...

Hollay Ghadery is the author of Fuse, a memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in various literary journals, and she is currently the Reviews Editor of Minola Review.

In this episode, Hollay and I talk about what it means to grow up mixed-race and mixed-culture, the fastest growing demographic group in society. We discuss the connection between mixed rac...

with Farzana Doctor, Author and Psychotherapist

Farzana Doctor is a psychotherapist and author of four critically acclaimed novels, including Seven, a groundbreaking novel partially based on her own experience with female genital mutilation.

In this episode, Farzana and I speak about the journey to belong in bodies rejected by the society around us, and why Farzana chose to speak publicly about her experience with female gen...

with Loretta J. Ross, Reproductive Justice Activist, Author and McArthur Fellow

The incomparable Loretta J. Ross is an activist, public intellectual, scholar, and author of the upcoming book Calling In the Calling Out Culture. She is also one of the founders of the Reproductive Justice movement in the USA, Associate Professor at Smith College and recipient of the 2022 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. As the third director of th...

with Deepa Purushothaman, Author

Deepa Purushothaman is the author of The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color can Redifine Power in Corporate America and the first woman of colour to make partner in the Deloitte’s history. Her 2022 book describes the paradox of women of colour at work: often the highest qualified yet most underestimated and underutilised of any workplace demographic.

In this episode, Deepa and I t...

Kwame Scott Fraser is a former commissioned military officer, once deployed as a United Nations peacekeeper. He’s now President and CEO of Dundurn Press, one of the largest independent publishers in North America publisher of my upcoming book Bones of Belonging. He’s also one of a very small minority of Black publishers in the industry.

You might wonder what the military and publishing have in common? We get to that in th...