Sarah Todd
In her imagination, Sarah Todd owns a small sandwich shop with a large garden in which she can dig in the dirt all year long. In reality she teaches community practice in the school of social work at Carleton University. Before becoming an academic she worked in a variety of community-based agencies in Southern Ontario and continues to be involved in the Ottawa community.
She loves working with students and the challenge of bringing community work to life in the classroom. Sarah works from a feminist perspective while exploring what post-structuralism can contribute to efforts for social change. She has had the privilege of working with community activists in the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua and is continually intrigued to realize how much there still is for her to learn about communities and social change.
Learn more about Sarah’s academic career.
Bill Lee
Bill Lee has worked and taught in community practice for many years. Experience taught him early on that problems were rooted in unequal power differentials, poverty, racism and other structural issues. Working with groups engaged in changing the world became a lot more important to him than attempting to help people adjust to unjust or inhumane situations and policies.
While he often opines that community practice by itself cannot be expected to cure these issues, he also believes community is an absolutely crucial site for beginning and sustaining action for positive change. It is where our private and public lives merge, where we come together to talk, argue, identify problems and solutions and begin to take action. Community practice became Bill’s life work and life journey. As a consequence, he has managed to acquire a lot of experiences, read a lot and obtain a variety of academic bells and whistles.
More importantly, he has met great numbers of great people in many parts of the world, particularly First People, who have shared his passion for social justice and have provided him with their wisdom and stories of their experiences as they have struggled toward social justice. This has impelled Bill to write books, to provide a framework that makes community organizing accessible and exciting to others.
Bill also finds that he respects and loves dogs. He rather thinks this is probably because they are communal animals.
Learn more about Bill Lee’s academic career and community activism.
Mirna E. Carranza
Mirna E. Carranza, a professor at the School of Social Work, McMaster University, has spent more than three decades as an educator, community organizer and trainer. Her work is grounded in theories of coloniality of power. She explores experiences of dislocation, trauma and exploitation of women, youth and children in the Americas – particularly in Central America, Mexico, Peru and the Caribbean. In Canada, she engages this research theme with immigrant families, particularly women and children living at the margins of society. She created “We are Not the Others,” a popular theatre production using innovative data analysis to retell stories of migration to new audiences working towards social justice and policy change. She has written numerous articles related to coloniality and its day-to-day manifestations.
Sam Demby
Sam Demby is a community organizer and storyteller. From 2022 to 2025, they worked as Communications Manager for the Reform Gravel Mining Coalition, which unites community groups to defend their health and the environment from Ontario’s aggregate mining industry. Previously, they were a lead Organizer with the Mesoamerican Caravan, an international solidarity network that supports Indigenous and farming communities resisting extractive industries.
Learn more about Sam’s work and connect here.
Mike Balkwill
Mike Balkwill has been a self-employed organizer and community development consultant for decades.
Mike has worked with grassroots groups and non-profit organizations in many sectors: housing, health, community services and the environment. He has taught courses in community organizing and social movements at McMaster and York universities. Mike supports campaigns to protect the environment from extractive industries and corporate profiteering. As Campaign Director with Wellington Water Watchers (WWW) Mike played an important role in their campaign to oppose Nestlé water bottling operations in Wellington County. In the face of mounting public pressure, Nestlé recently sold all its water bottling operations in Canada. With WWW staff, Mike provided strategic and operational support to local and international grass roots campaigns. Mike is at present (2025) VP Campaigns and Engagement with Small Change Fund. Mike is also the publisher of CommonAct Press.