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Our Staff

 

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Jennifer Hollett

Executive Director

Jennifer has worked as the head of news and government at Twitter Canada and is the co-founder of the fact-checking Super PAC App, which debuted at number one in the App Store. As an award-winning host, reporter, and producer, she’s covered stories across Canada and around the world with CBC News, CTV News, and MuchMusic. Jennifer has a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and a BA with a specialization in journalism and communications from Concordia University. Fun fact: her first job after Concordia involved answering emails for Céline Dion.
Follow @jenniferhollett on Twitter


Editorial

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Carmine Starnino

Editor-in-Chief

Carmine was one of the founding editors of Maisonneuve magazine and a senior editor at Reader’s Digest Canada. He has published eight books, including This Way Out (2009), which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, and two collections of literary essays. Leviathan (2016) is his most recent collection of poetry. He was a finalist for PWAC’s Editor of the Year in 2011.  
Follow @cstarnino on Twitter

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Claire Cooper

Managing Editor

Claire has worked in print and digital publishing for twenty years. She got her start at Toronto Life and then spent many years in the custom content world, writing and editing for brands such as Sobeys, CAA, and CPA Canada.

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Samia Madwar

Senior Editor

Samia Madwar is a senior editor at The Walrus. She was previously an editor at Up Here magazine, based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and has also worked as new media editor at Canadian Geographic. She has served as a judge for the National Magazine Awards, the Digital Publishing Awards, and the Online Journalism Awards, among others, and has mentored emerging journalists through the National Media Awards Foundation’s BIPOC Mentorship Program. She is currently on the board of directors at Magazines Canada.

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Harley Rustad

Senior Editor

Harley is the author of Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas (2022) and Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees (2018). He has written for Outside, the Globe and Mail, and Geographical, among others. He is a faculty editor at the Banff Centre’s mountain and wilderness writing residency and the founder of the Port Renfrew Writers’ Retreat.

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Carine Abouseif

Features Editor

Before joining The Walrus, Carine edited news and features for the Globe and Mail. Her writing on health care, mental health, and more has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve, Broadview, and beyond. She has also taught professional writing at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
Follow @carineabouseif on Twitter

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Dafna Izenberg

Features Editor

Dafna has worked as an editor at Maclean’s, Chatelaine, Sportsnet, Today’s Parent and Healthy Debate. Her writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Hazlitt and The New Quarterly.

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Monika Warzecha

Digital Editor

Before joining The Walrus, Monika Warzecha worked at Postmedia and MSN Canada. She has contributed to the Globe and Mail, TVO.org, Vice, and CBC Radio.
Follow @monikawarzecha on Twitter

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KC Hoard

Associate Editor

KC previously worked at Maclean’s, and his work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, Xtra Magazine, and Them. He was named Canada’s Biggest Carly Rae Jepsen Stan by the CBC in 2019 (and hasn’t shut up about it since).
Follow @kc_hoard on Twitter

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Allison Baker

Head of Research

Allison Baker is a fact checker, copy editor, and producer based in Tkaronto. She is a recipient of the 2021 Michener–L. Richard O’Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education. Since 2016, she has produced Mi’kmaq Matters, a podcast about the Mi’kmaw people, politics, land, and water of so-called Newfoundland.

Siddhesh Inamdar

Copy Editor

Siddhesh is a writer and editor. Before joining The Walrus, he worked at HarperCollins India, where he acquired and edited a number of bestselling, award-winning, and critically acclaimed nonfiction books. He has also been with some of India’s leading English newspapers, including Hindustan Times and The Hindu. He moved to Canada in the summer of 2022 and is based in London, Ontario.
Follow @inamdarsiddhesh on Twitter

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Ariella Garmaise

Assistant Editor

Ariella’s writing and cultural criticism has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, LitHub, Catapult, and others.
Follow @ariellagarmaise on Twitter

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Filipa Pajevic

Power Corporation of Canada Senior Fellow

Filipa Pajevic is a journalist and fact checker based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star, The Guardian, CityLab, and other publications. She was a 2024 Fellow in Journalism and Health Impact at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Previously, she spent over 12 years in academic research and teaching as an economic geographer trained in urban studies. Filipa holds a PhD from McGill University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. She has taught urban development theory and research methods, and mentored graduate students on research design and ethics. Passionate about sharing knowledge, she strives to inform the public through well-researched, factual and engaging journalism.
Follow @filipouris on Twitter

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Arthur Dennyson Hamdani

Canadian Race Relations Fellow

Arthur Dennyson Hamdani is an early career journalist based in Toronto. Alongside writing, copy-editing, and fact-checking, he has experience as a photographer, illustrator, and graphic designer. His works have appeared in blogTO and Ricepaper Magazine. He was a mentee at a journalism mentorship program for BIPOC called Shared Bylines. Before The Walrus, he worked as a design editor at the University of Toronto’s student paper, The Varsity. He holds an honours bachelor’s of arts in journalism, English literature, and migration studies from U of T.

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Mihika Agarwal

Cannonbury Fellow

Mihika is an Indian cultural journalist who writes about mental health, South Asian diaspora, film and television, and digital culture, among other things. She has worked in newsrooms in India, U.S., and Canada and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Chatelaine, The Georgia Straight, Architectural Digest, Vice, and more.
Follow @itmemihika on Twitter

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Dhriti Gupta

Chawkers Fellow

Dhriti is a journalist and fact-checker based in Toronto. Before joining The Walrus, she spent a year reporting on education, culture, urban affairs and business for the Toronto Star. You can find more of her work in Maclean’s, The Local, Exclaim! and This Magazine, among others.
Follow @dhritimgupta on Twitter

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Michelle Cyca

Contributing Writer

Michelle Cyca has written for Maclean’s, the Vancouver Sun, and Chatelaine.
Follow @michellecyca on Twitter

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Tajja Isen

Contributing Writer

Tajja Isen is the author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service. She has edited for Catapult, The Walrus, and Electric Literature.
Follow @tajjaisen on Twitter

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Sheima Benembarek

Contributing Writer

Sheima Benembarek is a contributing writer for The Walrus. She is a Moroccan Canadian journalist who has written for Broadview, Maisonneuve, the Literary Review of Canada, and Vogue Arabia. She is the author of Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women.

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Rhiannon Russell

Contributing Writer

Rhiannon Russell is a freelance journalist and fact-checker based in Whitehorse. In addition to her work as a contributing writer at The Walrus, she’s written for Chatelaine, Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic, Up Here, and Hazlitt.

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Rachel Browne

Contributing Writer

Rachel Browne is a contributing writer for The Walrus. She is an investigative journalist and documentary producer who has written for Vice, Maclean’s, the CBC, and Texas Monthly.

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Connor Garel

Contributing Writer

Connor Garel is the Justice Fund writer in residence at The Walrus as well as a contributing writer. A contributing editor for Dazed, he writes about culture, and his work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Canadian Art, Fashion, Vice, Dazed, and the Globe and Mail.

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Arno Kopecky

Contributing Writer

Arno Kopecky is a contributing writer for The Walrus. He is the author of the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award–nominated The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway and The Environmentalist’s Dilemma: Promise and Peril in an Age of Climate Crisis. He has written for the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, and The Tyee.

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Toula Drimonis

Contributing Writer

Toula Drimonis is a Montreal-based journalist, writer, and news producer. Her first book, We, the Others: Allophones, Immigrants, and Belonging in Canada, was released in 2022. She will be demystifying Quebec’s politics, language, and social issues as a contributing writer for The Walrus.

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Justin Ling

Contributing Writer

Justin Ling is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in stories that are under-reported or misunderstood. He is also the author of Missing From the Village: The Story of Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, the Search for Justice, and the System That Failed Toronto’s Queer Community.

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Philippe J. Fournier

Contributing Writer

Philippe J. Fournier is the creator of 338Canada, a statistical model of electoral projection based on historical trends, opinion polls and demographic data. He teaches astrophysics at Cégep de Saint-Laurent in Montreal.
Follow @338Canada on Twitter

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Pat Kane

Contributing Writer

Pat Kane is a visual storyteller based in Yellowknife, on the traditional land of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. His work has been published by the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Globe and Mail, and other media worldwide. Pat is of Irish-Canadian and Algonquin Anishinaabe ancestry, and is a member of the Timiskaming First Nation.
Follow @patkanephoto on Instagram

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Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory

Contributing Writer

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is an award-winning filmmaker, performance artist, poet, actor, storyteller, and writer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. She is known for performing uaajeerneq, a Greenlandic mask dance that involves storytelling and centres three elements: fear, humour and sexuality. Laakkuluk describes uaajeerneq as both a political and cultural act and an idiosyncratic art form. Upon giving her the 2021 Sobey Award, the award jury said that her “performance practice courageously defies preconceived notions through embodied lived experience.”


Art

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Zoya Shepherd

Design Director

Zoya Shepherd founded her design shop Studio44 in 2022, was for many years one of the top art directors at Harper Collins, charged with spearheading strategy and production of cover designs, brand campaigns, and marketing material for Harlequin books. She is a graduate of OCAD University, where she specialized in Inclusive Design.

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Meredith Holigroski

Senior Designer

Meredith has previously worked for the Globe and Mail and Toronto Life, and as a contributing designer on publications for the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and many others.

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James Lee Chiahan

Designer-at-Large

James Lee Chiahan is an award winning graphic designer and visual artist based in Montreal. He has contributed his art to publications like The New Yorker, Emergence Magazine, and The Washington Post.

Headshot of Brian Morgan, photographed by Guillaume Simoneau.

Brian Morgan

Designer-at-Large

Brian Morgan ended up in graphic design by way of bookselling. Although his mother, both her parents, and her grandfather were all commercial artists, when he was at RISD and Emily Carr he resisted the family trade and studied printmaking. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to have waited, for when he did eventually start his design career, the digital revolution was over and every studio had transitioned from waxers and bluelines to Macs and Zip 100 drives. Since then, he has worked for (or on) Maclean’s, Saturday Night, C, Dose, and The Walrus, where he was fortunate to be the art director for nine years. He has also designed for House of Anansi and Véhicule Press. Brian lives and works in Montreal and as well as helping out at The Walrus co-art directs Maisonneuve with Rachel Wine.


Audience

Bryan Maloney

Director of Audience Engagement

Bryan has worked in book and magazine publishing for fourteen years.

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Monita Mohan

Marketing Manager

Monita is a marketer by day and an entertainment writer by night. Previously, she was a copywriter at an ad agency working with brands like Microsoft and BlackBerry. She has also worked as a public relations professional at an international literature festival and a marketing writer at a Canadian nonprofit. She enjoys pop culture and champions diversity, inclusivity, and representation through her writing at Women Write About Comics, HuffPost, Tor.com, Collider.com, Vocal, Bam Smack Pow, and Show Snob.


Production

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Maria Musikka

Production Director

Maria joined The Walrus in the fall of 2016. Her previous work experience includes Toronto Life, Fashion, Inside Entertainment and IAD.


Events

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Tracie Jones

Director of Partnerships & Sponsorships

Tracie is a passionate revenue driver dedicated to developing collaborative partnerships. Prior to joining The Walrus, Tracie led conference sponsorship for The Conference Board of Canada for many years. She most recently spent a year working with Invest Ottawa as their sponsorship lead, serving the entrepreneurial community in Ottawa.

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Cailin Cooper

Senior Events Manager

Cailin works to bring people together and create accessible platforms for artists, journalists, scientists, and other compelling thinkers to share their ideas with curious audiences. Prior to joining The Walrus in 2015, she worked in book publishing and literary festival event marketing and programming.

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Emma Mackenzie Hillier

Senior Events Manager

Emma enjoys creating events that engage, challenge, and delight audiences. Prior to joining The Walrus, Emma worked in the performing arts as a producer and dramaturge. She supported the development and production of numerous award-winning plays and acted in a few of them as well. She has worked with such esteemed companies as the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Soulpepper, Factory Theatre, and more.

Tina Love Cho

Tina Love Cho

Head of Logistics

Tina is a native Torontonian and an experienced tour manager who has travelled Canada with the Vinyl Cafe, Paul Brandt, and many more.


Digital

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Christopher Wang

Digital Director

Chris has led digital projects for some of Canada’s best and biggest brands. He was previously an editor at McGill’s arts-and-culture magazine and has also contributed articles to South China Morning Post and Time Out.

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Makda Mulatu

Digital Production Manager

Makda Mulatu is a multi-disciplinary creative producer based in amiskwaciwâskahikan or Edmonton, Alberta. Her poetry, interviews, and culture writing have appeared in publications like Contemporary Verse 2, filling Station, and This Magazine, and from 2020-2023, she hosted and produced the literary podcast Glass Bookshop Radio. She previously served as the 2023/2024 CIBC Digital Fellow for Emerging Black Journalists.


Operations

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Karl Percy

Chief Financial Officer

Karl is a professional accountant (CPA-CGA) with over twenty-five years of experience in the media and entertainment sectors.

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Ally Lu

Office Operations Manager

Galvanized by ideas and conversation, Ally is a pro at organizing chaos and building bridges as a steward of non-profit operations for Toronto’s cultural institutions. She comes to The Walrus from the production and events teams at Luminato Festival Toronto and Toronto International Festival of Authors (Harbourfront Centre).


Development

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Laura Lavie

Head of Philanthropy

Laura has been fundraising for a diverse range of nonprofits in the Middle East and Canada since 2005 and loves connecting individuals and organizations to causes they care about. Laura is formally trained in fine arts and completed her CFRE in 2017. She has led several fundraising efforts and campaigns at organizations including the Peres Center for Peace, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Toronto, Child Development Institute, Luminato, and the Aga Khan Museum.

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Vilayath Ali

Donor Relations Officer

Vilayath enjoys helping writers, musicians, and other artists create. He has worked as a grant writer and arts organizer and cofounded an artist collective that provides arts education to learners from around the world.

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Rose Danen

Development Officer, Annual Giving

Rose is a purveyor of community building—whether that be through reporting the news or forwarding important causes and issues. Rose previously worked as a journalist and her work has appeared in CBC North, the Globe and Mail, CTV Ottawa, the Ontario Grain Farmer, and the Wimot-Tavistock Gazette. She has contributed to initiatives to promote and fundraise for organizations she’s passionate about, including the Canadian Cancer Society and 4-H Ontario.


The Walrus Lab

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Mihira Lakshman

Director of The Walrus Lab

Mihira is the director of The Walrus Lab, the client-services division of The Walrus. Mihira has nearly twenty years of experience in media, having worked at large and small companies in web, mobile, social media, television, radio, and print platforms. He has performed a variety of roles including editorial oversight, sponsor integration, custom content and partnerships, staff management, digital strategy, and investigative journalism.

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Alana Hamilton

Creative Lead & Project Manager

Before joining The Walrus, Alana worked on the agency side of the media sector for over a decade, with global brands such as Apple, Coca-Cola, and more.

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Paul Jaramillo

Advertising & Sales Manager

Paul has worked in the media sector for sixteen years, both on the agency side as the print buyer at the Procter & Gamble print agency of record, and on the sales side as a national account manager for Canadian Living, Elle Canada, and Style at Home.