Towards a feminist city of Surrey

In September 2021, City in Colour Urban Consultancy Cooperative (CiC) and Solid State Community Industries (Solid State) were awarded the Feminist Response and Recovery Grant through the Women and Gender Equality Canada’s Women’s Program funds. This three-year grant was designed to address or remove systemic barriers to women’s equality including “improving the economic security and prosperity of women and girls; encouraging women and girls in leadership roles; and ending violence against women”. Our collective motivation for this project stems from a deeply personal connection to the experiences of racialized women in workplaces, especially civic institutions. Our aim with the ‘Towards a Feminist City of Surrey’ project was to understand and address systemic issues affecting racialized women in their workplaces, utilizing our research skills to highlight the need for systemic change.

  • One of the outcomes of this research is a workbook titled "Creating a Safer Workplace for Racialized Women." This workbook is designed for individuals in managerial or leadership positions within civic institutions who are committed to promoting equity and inclusion in their workplaces. It is particularly relevant for those responsible for hiring, retention, and advancement of employees.

    You can download the workbook here.

  • We are offering tailored workshops for teams, organizations, or individuals interested in learning practical steps to foster safer and more inclusive work environments for racialized women. Please contact us at team@cityincolourcoop.com for more information or to schedule a workshop.

Jshandeep Jassal

Our Advisory Committee

Jshandeep Jassal

As a passionate learner, Jshandeep embodies an extensive academic background in Sociology which she is further developing as a current student of a MA in Child, Youth, Family, & Community studies. She is an advocate for creating safe spaces for racialized youth and families through an intersectional feminist lens. She currently mentors a group of Punjabi youth who are striving to strengthen intergenerational connections in their community, and has co-founded two non-profit organizations (Let Her Talk & The South Asian Healing Network). To wind down Jshandeep enjoys taking care of her dogs and birds as well as creating beautiful knitted or crocheted artwork for her loved ones.

Preet Heer

Preet has worked with the City of Surrey for 19 years where she now is the Manager of Community Planning. She is responsible for overseeing the preparation of the City’s Official Community Plan, growth management and demographic forecasting, city-wide and neighbourhood plans, and policy development in housing, environment, heritage, and agriculture. In particular, she is interested in how cities can be retrofitted to become more inclusive, walkable, transit-oriented places. Preet holds a master’s degree in Community and Regional Planning from University of British Columbia.

Tiffany Muller Myrdahl

Tiffany is a senior lecturer in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and the Urban Studies Program at Simon Fraser University.  She is originally from Bde Óta Othúŋwe (Minneapolis), traditional Dakota homelands. She teaches courses on feminist urbanism and research methods and serves on the Advisory for SFU's Community Engaged Research initiative (CERi). 
Tiffany completed a master’s in public policy, followed by a doctorate in geography with a certificate in feminist studies from the University of Minnesota. Her research and community activism focuses on urban inequalities and inclusion strategies, especially those targeting women and 2SLGBTQ+ communities.

Lily Grewal

Lily is a longtime community advocate who brings leadership, governance and financial experience to Vancity's Board of Directors. She approaches her work with a focus on collaboration, inclusion and diversity.
Throughout her career, Lily has been dedicated to social change. As a creative and solution-focused administrator with over 15 years of community and governance experience, she brings collaborative leadership that is focused on outcomes. She has spearheaded complex program and policy initiatives across a variety of sectors including non-profits, communities and public institutions. Some highlights include the development of multi-million dollar programming for immigrants, creating community-led youth initiatives in under-served communities and the development of equity policies for community organizations.

Meghan Winters

Meghan (she/her), Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, CIHR Applied Public Health Chair in Gender and Sex in Healthy Cities. Meghan leads the Cities, Health, and Active Transportation Research Lab (CHATR, www.chatrlab.ca), where she and her team study how community design impacts the way people get around and connect with each other. She works closely with partners to advance research at the intersection of population health, urban planning, transportation, and safety so as to support practice, policy, and programmatic action towards healthy and equitable cities.

Meg Holden

Dr. Meg Holden is a scholar of urban studies and geography, specializing in urban sustainable development in policy, planning, theory, ethics, and popular expression. Dr. Holden's research takes place in the cities of North America, particularly the Cascadia region, and in cities internationally through her research engagement in a number of global networks of urban professionals and researchers. Teaching graduate courses in Urban Studies and Geography and undergraduate courses in Geography, Dr. Holden supervises students investigating the evolution of sustainability thinking, culture, policy and practice in a number of domains, locally and internationally, as well as urban planning, policy, development and civil society topics more broadly.