About Us
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Our goal is straightforward: We want to enhance & amplify the impact being made by non-profits organizations in Canada.
We do this by partnering with non-profit leaders, teams and communities to find clarity, build capacity, and empower meaningful change.
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We live by and embody the 4 powerful C's are our core values:
*Culture* Because people come first in everything we do, empathy is our starting point.
*Collaboration* Trusting, ethical relationships are essential to us—we can’t be successful without them.
*Community* We come from and engage in a range of communities. Enriching communities is the core of our being
*Courage* We are willing to go first, to change, and to learn. We challenge our clients and ourselves with hard questions
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Our Team
Natasha Qureshi
Natasha is an experienced business management professional and has held leadership roles at major international firms. Her experience spans healthcare, fintech, consumer goods and non-profits. She has designed and implemented strategic plans, operational plans and brand positioning at large multinational organizations with brands/services such as Lysol, Durex, Citibank etc. Since the last three years she has solely focused on non-profits and bringing these skills and resources to help drive greater organizational and community impact. She has an MBA and Masters in Computer Science from Cornell University, USA and is also a fulbright scholar.
Soofia Mahmood
Soofia is a Strategic communications, governance, and executive planning leader. Her scope of experience includes marketing and advertising in the corporate sector, and communications, project management, and administration in non-profit and international development sectors. She has worked at Unicef, Ontario Oublic Service, The 519 and now is the chief of staff at Raising the Village. She is our communications strategy and planning guru, is very creative, loves to meet deadlines, and always enthusiastic about learning. Her two true loves are photography and writing.
Lorraine Agustin Robles
Lorraine is the client representative manager and office administrator. She works behind the scenes and is a maestro in making sure all tasks are organised and that the office is running smoothly even in a remote environment. Lorraine moved to Canada from the Philippines approx 4 years ago. She has a masters in public health administration and has worked at a prior non-profit before joining Sympl solutions.
Our Consultants
Owais Lightwala
Owais Lightwala is an arts leader and creative producer. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Performance at the Creative School at Toronto Metropolitan University, where his teaching and research focus on creative producing and entrepreneurship. One of his major research projects is building SAI a new app that is hoping to revolutionize the way that creative people manage their finances. Prior to that, he spent 8 years as the Managing Director for Why Not Theatre. He advises many arts organizations (including theatre and dance companies, music presenters, film festivals and more) as a strategic consultant, particularly on finding better ways of doing things, changing who’s in the audience, and anything to do with numbers.
Umair Jaffar
Umair brings two decades of experience working in the arts, heritage and culture sector. He is the CEO of Small World Music, one of Toronto’s most significant presenters of culturally-diverse music and also the producers of the Global Toronto Music Conference. He is a member of the City of Toronto Music Advisory Council, Folk Alliance Internationals Cultural Equity Council and Music Advisory Committee for the The JUNO Awards. He serves as a board member for several non-profit art organizations including Asia Music Summit, CAPACOA (Canadian Arts Presenting Association), Folk Music Ontario and Bhutan's Hidden Kingdom Music Festival.