STT Senior Trainers

Our 2009 STT Senior Trainers represent diversity, talent and the cutting edge of web expertise and technology, and have worked for social change in every sector of society.

Here are this year's Senior Trainers. These experts in the field of Social Tech will be leading our STT training sessions and assisting all participants in reaching their online goals.

Cheryl Contee

Cheryl Contee is a partner and co-founder of the social media consultancy Fission Strategy where she specializes in online advocacy, marketing, and communications.

Prior to launching Fission, Cheryl worked in the diverse fields of branding, social media and web development. She was Vice President at Fleishman-Hillard San Francisco, Web Director for Oceana, as well as the Senior Producer for Discovery Communications where she launched 40 multi-lingual websites that included work with Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and TLC. She has also appeared widely in mainstream media including the Washington Post, New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, BBC and CNN.

Phillip Djwa

Phillip Djwa is the founder of Agentic Communications, and a certified Internet Marketing specialist and strategist with more than 15 years experience in the high-technology industry.

During this time, Phillip has worked on a wide range of technology and web-integrated communications projects for Fortune 500, high-tech start-up, and not-for-profit organizations. His clients have included the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and VanCity. He has also supported a diverse array of community initiatives including the First People’s Heritage Council, Friends of Chamber Music, and First Nations Technology Council.

Sam Dorman

Sam Dorman proudly bears the scars of many (mostly) successful technology battles fought on behalf of nonprofit organizations throughout the years.

With a background in communications strategy, new media, and facilitation and training, Sam brings a strategic and comprehensive creative approach to his work. He recently served as Managing Director of the League of Young Voters, a national youth political empowerment organization, before which he was the organization's first Director of Technology and Internet Programs, and he worked at MoveOn during the 2004 election.

Beka Economopoulos

Beka Economopoulos has 15 years experience as a grassroots field and online organizer, working with local, national, and international NGOs, community groups, and activist mobilizations.

Prior to her current role with Fission Strategy, Beka created and ran the Online Organizing department at Greenpeace USA. She is also the co-founder and director of Not An Alternative, a volunteer-run non-profit organization based in Brooklyn, New York, whose mission aims to integrate art, activism, technology and theory in order to affect popular understandings of events, symbols and history. She has been interviewed extensively and quoted on CNN, BBC, and the NY Times.

Darrell Houle

Darrell Houle, the Senior Project Manager at Communicopia and has 13 years of website experience with a fouces on maximizing web performance.

He began building websites on the newly created Internet back in 1993. At that time images had just began showing up on websites and blinking text, usually red, was the hottest visual effect. Since then, he has worked for 4 web development firms, an Internet start-up, and created countless educational, private, public, environmental, and social change websites—even winning a few awards along the way. Fresh out of university Darrell had the good fortune to work with Jess McMullin a well known Canadian pioneer in User Experience. This project ignited his passion for user-centered web design and informs each project he works on.

Read more about Darrell at Communicopia.

Samer Rabadi

Samer Rabadi is a Senior Campaign Manager at Care2.com, and works with the site's nonprofit partners to meet their advocacy and list growth goals.

He's been involved in social justice for almost 15 years -- working on issues as diverse as affirmative action, torture, human rights education, civil and political rights, LGBT rights, and global warming. Previous to Care2, he was the Deputy Director of Amnesty International USA's Western Region, taking special interest in community and relationship building in the organizations volunteer and membership structures.

Eric Squair

Eric Squair focuses his work on creating effective online and offline communications campaigns for organizations and individuals based on the quality of their progressive values.

A Web of Change Alumni, Eric has more than a decade of communications and campaigning experience working with organizations ranging from political parties to international NGOs to small advocacy campaigns. With core skills in writing, editing, multimedia production and project management, Eric is currently working on online communications for the Make Poverty History campaign in their effort to close the gap between the world's rich and poor. He also continues to work on a range of freelance projects and speaking engagements.

Find out more about Eric at his blog.

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is co-founder of Biro, a pioneering online creative firm that advises movement-leading organizations from around the world working for sustainability and social change.

This includes non-profits, charities, campaigns and campaigning green business. Drawing on almost a decade of experience in field, Tim provides strategic council for the company’s select tribe of long-term clients – including Greenpeace UK, 350.org, Global Zero and Brighter Planet – helping them grow their movements online. He is also the former Communications Director at the Adbusters Media Foundation.

Deanna Zandt

Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations. She specializes in social media, and is a leading expert in women and technology. Zandt works with groups to create and implement effective web strategies toward organizational goals of civic engagement and empowerment, and uses her background in linguistics, advertising, telecommunications and finance to complement her technical expertise. She has spoken at a number of conferences, including the National Conference on Media Reform, Bioneers, America's Future Now (formerly "Take Back America,") Women Action & The Media, and provides beginner and advanced workshops both online and in person.

Read more about Deanna at DeannaZandt.com

Leadership Trainer

Annahid Dashtgard

Annahid Dashtgard Annahid Dashtgard (B.A., M.Ed.) is the co-founder of Anima Leadership in Toronto and has over a decade of experience as a national leader in the anti-corporate globalization movement, as well as being a social justice, anti-oppression and popular educator.

A published author and public speaker, she specializes in leadership, equity and social justice issues and has worked variously in government, education, non-profit and healthcare sectors. Anima Leadership is a training and consulting firm that specializes in nurturing a leadership of interdependence—a cutting-edge approach that integrates anti-discrimination and emotional intelligence approaches with conflict transformation skills.

Learn more about Annahid at Anima Leadership.

STT Production Team

The STT is a collaboration between Web of Change, and MaRS. The people who make the STT happen include:

Jason Mogus - Conference Producer

Jason Mogus is the founder of the Web of Change and the Social Tech Training, which for 8 years have supported community building in the social technology sector. He is a board member with BC Social Venture Partners, was a founding board member of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility and is a long time member of SVN.

Jason is the CEO of Communicopia. He leads online vision and strategy engagements for clients including BC Hydro, The Elders, Make Poverty History, Greenpeace Canada, UNICEF Canada, and the United Nations Foundation. A serial entrepreneur, Jason has held senior roles in technology start-ups since 1995.

Rosalyn Lemieux - Agenda Lead

Prior to co-founding Fission Strategy, Roz Lemieux served as the Executive Director of the New Organizing Institute. Roz worked for MoveOn.org Political Action in various capacities-including staff trainer, “geek” organizer, and volunteer program manager from April 2004 to July 2006. Prior to joining MoveOn, she operated a small independent consulting business, conducting online campaigns for progressive candidates and causes. She got her start in online organizing while serving as the Feminist Majority Foundation and Ms. Magazine’s web team director from 1999-2003.

Read more about Roz at Fission Strategy.

Julia Watson - Conference Manager

Julia is Director of Operations and office empath at Communicopia Internet. A firm believer in the ability of humans to change world consciousness, she is keen to explore how Web 2.0 can affect social change.

As the former Program Director at Hollyhock, Canada's leading educational retreat centre, she scheduled approximately 100 programs and conferences each year, including Communicopia's Web of Change. Julia is a meditation teacher and shareholder and steward in the budding Lightwork Ecovillage on Gambier Island.

Kori Brus - Communications

Kori Brus is leading communications and outreach for this year’s Web of Change community, including the upcoming Social Tech Training. After returning from eight months of travel through Africa and India in 2008, he managed the online campaign for Gregor Robertson and Vision Vancouver’s landslide municipal election win this past fall.

Previously he was responsible for range of media and fundraising roles that included rebuilding the direct response program at Sierra Legal, and leading their successful rebranding to Ecojustice Canada. In June, he’ll return to Ecojustice as Acting Director of Communications.

Lisa Torjman - SiG@MaRS

Lisa Torjman joined MaRS to establish the social entrepreneurship program at MaRS that includes Social Innovation Generation (SiG@MaRS). This program provides social innovators and entrepreneurs access to resources to turn their ideas into positive outcomes for society.

Lisa previously worked as an account executive at Manifest Communications, a social marketing agency, and prior to that, at the Corkin Shopland Gallery in the Distillery District. Before moving to Toronto, Lisa was employed at the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation over three summers while attending McGill University in Montreal, Quebec as an English Major with a Cultural Studies concentration.

Allyson Hewitt - SiG@MaRS

Allyson is establishing the social innovation program at MaRS that includes Social Innovation Generation (SiG@MaRS). This program provides social innovators and entrepreneurs access to resources to turn their ideas into positive outcomes for society.

Previously, Allyson was the Executive Director of Safe Kids Canada, where she advocated injury prevention to children. Prior to that, Allyson was the Executive Director of Community Information Toronto, an agency that matches people with services. In this capacity, she helped lead the development of 211, providing three-digit and online access to social service, community and government information.

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