Our Team

Backbone team

HNC’s small but mighty backbone team guides its many partners’ collective impact efforts. Backbone roles include:

  • Coordinating and facilitating the community of practice and supporting practice partners’ on-the-ground programming efforts;
  • Designing and undertaking research and evaluation activities with demonstration partners;
  • Maintaining, nurturing and expanding our broad set of partnerships;
  • Organizing and hosting cross-sectoral dialogues and knowledge mobilization activities;
  • Overseeing administration and finances.

What is a collective impact project?

A collective impact project is a network of community members, organizations, and institutions who advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems level change.1

It has five fundamental conditions:

  1. It starts with a common agenda;
  2. It establishes shared measurement;
  3. It fosters mutually reinforcing activities;
  4. It encourages continuous communications;
  5. It has a strong backbone.

Research and engagement team

Dr. Atiya Mahmood

SFU Research Co-lead (Professor, SFU Gerontology)

Atiya Mahmood, Professor at Simon Fraser University, smiles, wearing teal glasses and a teal shirt with a colourful shawl over her left shoulder.

Dr. Meg Holden

SFU Research Co-lead (Director and Professor, SFU Urban Studies)

Dr. Meg Holden SFU Research Co-lead (Director and Professor, SFU Urban Studies).

Dr. Meghan Winters

SFU Research Co-lead (Associate Professor, SFU Health Sciences)

Dr. Meghan Winters SFU Research Co-lead Associate Professor, SFU Health Sciences.

Madeleine Hebert

Senior Housing Specialist (Happy Cities)

Madeleine leads housing research projects at Happy Cities, working with professionals and communities to develop solutions to improve social connectedness, resilience, and wellbeing.

Rob Wipond

Contributing Editor

Rob Wipond poses in a blue collared shirt and almost smiles.

Olivia Tomlinson

SFU Research Assistant

Olivia Tomlinson, Research Assistant for Hey Neighbour, stands smiling in front of a snowy backdrop, wearing a black Nike sweatshirt and green winter jacket.

Jean Paul Ramírez Echavarría

SFU Research Assistant

Kishore Seetharaman

SFU Research Assistant

Kishore Seetharaman smiles, wearing black square-framed glasses.

Demonstration partners

HNC’s demonstration partners are the real innovators, working with residents of multi-unit housing communities to build social connections and resilience. They share their learnings with support team members and each other through professionally facilitated community of practice sessions.

Brightside community logo.
Building Resilient Neighbourhoods, logo.
West End Seniors' Network logo.
Seniors Services Society of BC.
Concert Properties logo.

Systems partners

Our systems partners are all concerned, like HNC, about the troubling increase in loneliness and social isolation and see a role for landlords, property managers and non-profits to work within multi-unit housing contexts to build community, social connectedness and resilience. We value their financial and in-kind support and the ongoing dialogue about the systemic aspects of our work.

Advisors

Footnotes

  1. “What is Collective Impact,” by Collective Impact Forum.