Design Influence Seven25

Host Isabelle Swiderski sits down with Meaghan Kennedy, founder of Orange Sparkle Ball, an innovation consultancy focused on public-private partnerships to explore the role communities / networks / ecosystems can serve as a supportive framework for change.

“What if we thought of the Bronx as an economy of scale? And what if we try to create a plan for the borough that actually brings all of us in, where we share a vision, where we share in leadership, and where the wealth and capital is owned by us and bred by us? So the simple phrase is: what if we ran it?”—Michael Partis



Host Isabelle Swiderski sits down with Michael Partis, current Executive Director of the Red Hook Initiative and previously ED of the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative to discuss the making of the Bronx-wide plan and what it takes to build economic democracy in a borough that’s been underestimated and underfunded but never gives up on its people and its values.

This episode features April De Simone, a transdisciplinary practitioner working at the intersection of architecture, planning, and systems thinking. She collaborates with different communities across the country, bringing to light the lasting impacts of redlining, urban renewal, and gentrification.

What are new ways to explore housing as a key node in ecosystems underpinning community fabric and the reinvention of democracy? How might we consider where we live as one aspect of our entire experience and health? How can under-represented voices finally be heard and valued to co-create equitable systems and shared value?

April shares insights related to her collaborative experiences surfacing, reframing, and dismantling intentionally designed systems of inequity and, how, through this reimagining, we might, somehow, find a new path to democracy.

Sana Kapadia, director of strategy at 2X Global, sits down with host Isabelle Swiderski to talk about the current state of gender lens investing and the resources and approaches that support the people and partnerships behind the work.

This episode features Vicki Saunders, founder of Coralus (formerly SheEO) based in Toronto. Coralus now operates in 5 countries and through the annual contribution of individual activators, provides interest-free loans and, crucially, a community of support, to ventures led by women- and non-binary folks. Over 140 ventures tackling the world’s to-do list have been taken in and gone on to grow their impact.


Vicki shares her insights from 20+ years spent exploring the conditions that allow individuals to thrive and what it takes to imagine and co-create a new solution for women to fund each other. How might we all show up? What are our responsibilities, as individuals or organisations committed to social justice, to not only acknowledge these tools for building a more equitable economy, but to actively support their expansion and adoption?

This episode, the last in Season II, features Darrell Schuurman, co-founder and CEO of the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. 

The CGLCC is a coalition of LGBTQ2S+ businesses, government, corporate and community partners advocating for change to make a more inclusive Canadian economy possible. Darrell sheds some light on the evolution of the organization as it navigates its domestic role and its growing impact in other countries.