Keita Demming

Keita was one of the first students to make social innovation the focus of their Ph.D research. He earned his degree at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto.

For most of his career, he has lived in a space that merges theory and practice related to business and social innovation. Keita develops educational and strategic approaches to facilitating social innovation and organizational change. He is considered to be an innovation consultant, process designer, facilitator, and thinker. His interests include strategy, resilience, power, systems thinking, design thinking and complexity.

Keita has consulted with a number of organizations in the private and third sector. At the University of Toronto, he has served as the coordinator for the Social Economy Centre which promotes and disseminates multidisciplinary research and policy analysis on issues affecting the intersection among public, private and non-profit sector. Keita also leads an initiative called “The B Studio Project”, which is an Innovation and Society workshop series targeted primarily at educators and teachers working in the field of education. The secondary objective of the project is to introduce young adults to an Innovation and Society curriculum that he has developed. During his two week session, participants work on a case study and apply their learning to a real world project.

As a way of improving the content for the B Studio Project, Keita also started SIDELab, a lab exploring ways of teaching systems, integrative, design and evaluative thinking. Currently the group is writing a book, as a way of sharing what they have learnt over the past four years.

Keita worked with Social Innovation Generation (SiG@Waterloo) on implementing their first Diploma in Social Innovation. He later worked with SiG@Waterloo in the development and evaluation of their Knowledge Hub, a website designed to provide learning resources about creating conditions for social innovation.

Keita has also held the license for TEDxPortofSpain for five years, and has led a team of passionate changemakers through successful events that showcase ideas worth sharing. Keita has also recently started a blog on concepts and theories related to Social Innovation.