Meghan Hellstern

Meghan Hellstern

Faculty, DELP

Meghan is a human-centered designer, strategist and facilitator with more than 12 years of experience who draws on a broad toolkit to gather insights that drive impact and change in support of the public good. Meghan works as a Senior Specialist, Innovation at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), where she uses design and other innovation methods to ensure that every Canadian can afford a home that meets their needs by 2030.

Prior to joining CMHC, Meghan was a Senior Project Designer at the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship (BII+E) where she led high-profile projects exploring a variety of critical policy topics including women’s entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence (AI). Before joining BII+E, she worked as the lead design strategist at the City of Toronto’s Civic Innovation Office, a Bloomberg Philanthropies-funded innovation team (i-team) dedicated to using human-centered design and data-informed decision-making to improve residents’ lives. She has also worked with organizations like Code for Canada, Laurier University’s Social Innovation and Venture Creation (SIVC), Samara Canada, the Oakville Public Library, and MaRS Solutions Lab, not to mention spending years working with the Government of Canada on a wide range of files from electoral reform and veterans affairs to
digital government and indigenous affairs.

Meghan contributes to her community in many ways, including designing and delivering the Ontario Digital Inclusion Summit, one of Ontario’s first conferences on the topic, co-founding Canada’s biggest civic tech community Civic Tech Toronto and sitting on the advisory board of the Digital Justice Lab. She also maintains a vibrant facilitation, consulting and teaching practice at places like Ryerson University’s Chang School of Continuing Education and the Institute on Governance in Ottawa.