Dr Temitope Adefarakan is the Director of Black Women, Girls and Gender Diverse (B-WGGD) Peoples Initiative. She is an EDI professional with almost 20 years of demonstrated leadership as an educator, academic, and grassroots Black feminist advocate and activist. She uses an intersectional, anti-racist, anti-oppressive and anti-colonial approach to help individuals and organizations address racism and other forms of discrimination to develop a workplace culture and climate that is diverse, equitable and inclusive.
With a doctoral degree in Equity and Social Justice in Education, and Women and Gender Studies, she developed a solid foundation in theory that informs EDI work, while simultaneously practicing through anti-racism, anti-oppression and human rights frameworks – the hallmarks of equity and inclusion. Her seasoned experience in merging academic theory with grassroots activism has produced a particular type of EDI approach that focuses on the soul of an organization to yield results in terms of transforming its culture and climate through: diverse and inclusive employee representation; delivery of trainings, workshops and learning sessions; development of policies, practices and procedures that are equity centered and informed by community engagement; and service provision and delivery for equitable outcomes.
Dr Adefarakan is a seasoned educator who holds a Bachelor of Education degree, and she is also a faculty member at the University of Toronto’s Transitional Year Programme (TYP), an equity hub with a strong ethos of inclusion, diversity and belonging. There is a specific focus on increasing Indigenous and African-Canadian attendance since these communities have been historically under-represented due to legacies of colonialism, expressed as anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism.
In 2017, she became the first Anti-Racism Anti-Oppression Lead at the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, the second-largest child welfare agency in Ontario. In this role, she leads the development and implementation of an anti-Black racism strategy and embedding anti-racism and anti-oppression culture and practice across the organization. She leads the implementation internally for staff and senior leadership, and externally to improve community engagement and services to Black children, youth and families, and other equity-seeking communities involved with child welfare.
She has been selected as a recipient of 𝐓𝐡𝐞 Professional Excellence 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 at Remarkable Mothers Award at the RMA Gala 2023!
To know more about the Remarkable Mothers Award ’23, visit HERE.
You can book your ticket here or by scanning the QR Code below:
