With Leslie Woo CRE®, Chief Executive Officer of CivicAction.
Leslie is a respected city leader building sustainable communities and shaping urban development for over two decades in Canada’s fastest-growing urban region,the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. She is a seasoned urban planner, architect, and tireless community activator.
At CivicAction, Leslie has been building leadership programs that are building the next generation of civic-minded leaders. She is leading the growth of the next generation of civic-minded leaders. By equipping them with the knowledge and networks needed to tackle persistent urban problems, she is truly in the impact business.
Transcript
00:00:02 Andrea
Hello and welcome to Alright, Now What? I’m your host, Andrea Gunraj, for the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Gender equality and justice, where we live, work, learn, and play is the goal, and it makes life better for everyone. This podcast is our chance to connect with insightful people and explore what it’ll take to get there in Canada.
The work of the Canadian Woman’s Foundation and its partners takes place on traditional First Nations, Métis, and Inuit territories. We are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this land. However, we recognize that land acknowledgments are not enough. We need to pursue truth, reconciliation, decolonization, and allyship in an ongoing effort to make right with all our relations.
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00:01:29 Andrea
Today I’m speaking with Leslie Woo—planner, architect, community activator, and CEO of CivicAction.
So, my first question for you, I want to know, what kind of gender equality changemaker are you? You did the quiz, you got analyzed. What were your results and were you surprised at all by any of them?
00:01:49 Leslie
I think the thing that I wasn’t surprised about is that I scored higher on Collaborator and Connector, in the 38-39% on both of them. And then Challenger was my next level down and I think I would have said to my younger self, if I’d done this quiz when I was, I don’t know, 10-15 years ago, I would have imagined that on the Challenger side it would have been higher and on the Collaborator/Connector maybe a little lower.
And then when I was in my early early days, because I’m trained as an architect, I think my Creator score might have been higher because I would have thought I was, like, in this mode of, you know, building and creating and designing and so forth.
So I think what was really cool about the survey and the results, it does reflect where I am now. But it made me think about if I had taken this survey a couple years ago, or even when I was younger, that the results might have been very different.
00:02:50 Andrea
So, we change as time goes on, maybe the things that we lean on.
00:02:55 Leslie
We evolve, we experience different things, and we recalibrate ourselves. Other people get to challenge us and we respond or don’t. So yeah, life is pretty wonderful that way.
00:03:08 Andrea
So let me ask you this, because I think it relates to it. What would you say today are the core life lessons that you bring to this effort of growing gender equality and justice in Canada?
00:03:19 Leslie
I think the importance of role models. Like, I actually—when I reflect back on my own journey about, you know, my own self-awareness and growth, which is, you know, still a work in progress, it is the people who I both worked with, looked up to, and those that helped me along the way that have really enabled me to become a more fulsome leader in this space and have a greater kind of toolkit that I carry around to be an advocate for and a practitioner of more equality for women.
So, you know, these are folks from as young as my role models of my grandmother and my mother to folks who I learnt a lot about policy making and planning, and I just feel that there have been many. I don’t think as I was going through my life, I called them role models or I looked to them in that way, but on reflection, you know, they really, they really have been an important aspect and something that I’ve learned is so important.
And now in the work that I do, trying to ensure that rising leaders and young people and women and, you know, racialized women have an opportunity to have access to those kinds of role models. Because I’ve been fortunate and not everybody has such easy access to that.
So, I think that’s one of the core things I would say. There are others, but I’ll pause there because I think that’s been one of the most important things that I didn’t know at the beginning, but now I know.
00:05:02 Andrea
What I like about you is that you found a way to pay that back, pay that forward, pay that to the younger generation coming. That’s a big part of the work that CivicAction does.
Now let me ask you about your passions. What are you most passionate about? You have a very dynamic background and a wealth of experience in lots of different areas. But if you had to pick your passion now that connects to gender equality, what would you tell us?
00:05:30 Leslie
The thing that makes me, that I’m so driven by now, is ensuring that everyone that I come across or who I see has the ability to reach their full potential. And at this stage of my career, it’s less about my full potential and it’s more about, how can I allow others to really flourish?
And what I’ve realized now—because you know I do speaking engagements, I’ve met a lot of different individuals, folks, hired a lot of people in my career and so forth and people come back and say, you know, it was that little conversation we had, you mentioned this and I really took it to heart, and you know, this is what I’m doing and here I am now. And you don’t realize how much small words, conversations, interactions enable others to reach their full potential.
And so, I think in the work that I do now at CivicAction, and what I want to continue for as long as I’m on this planet, is to ensure that I’m creating and supporting their success, because it just makes my life much more purposeful.
00:06:47 Andrea
Speaking of purpose, I think one of the things that CivicAction is doing right now, a major piece of the work, is on housing affordability. And it just strikes me this conversation is becoming more common to look at the different ways that different people are impacted differently—depending on who they are—on affordability issues, on housing issues, on homelessness, on under housing, all the things that are related to that ecosystem of having home, having belonging, having place.
I’d love to ask you just some nuts and bolts about what you think around the impact of gender on housing affordability in Canada and certainly within the GTHA, which you’re really focused on.
00:07:28 Leslie
The lens I bring to this crisis—and it is a crisis, that we’ve not figured out how to get ourselves out of just yet—I kind of go back, as with many things, to my own personal experience.
So, I have been a single mom. And I’ve navigated this journey; my kids are now grown adults. I had the benefit of a number of things that many people today or single moms don’t have. I had the benefit of an extended parent community, through my kids’ friends and their childcare. I had, you know I was reflecting on this, I had an incredibly empathetic bank manager who really—literally I was in his office once crying because I wasn’t sure how I was going to make up a mortgage payment because it felt so important to me that my kids have the stability of a home when I was going through separation and divorce.
And then I thought about the community of women who supported me professionally, holding up my confidence and all that. So, one would say, what does that have to do with housing policy, Leslie?
It has everything to do with it, in a sense it’s what we’re talking about in the news about supply and construction—it’s about people. And today, you know, all those things that enabled me to have a home for my kids. For more and more people—and I had a job, I had a profession, I was working. But, you know, there were some months and some days and some weeks where, you know, it was one, literally one, paycheck away from having to do something more drastic.
That situation times thousands is what is being experienced here in the Greater Toronto Hamilton area by, you know, for me, my experience is as a single mom, but it’s happening more to all different facets of our population.
And so, I think what it speaks to me is that the solutions are going to come not from one place, not from, you know, not from developers building homes alone, not from banks enabling families to continue to afford to rent or own. It’s going to come from, you know, the Parks and Recreation facilities that enable families to continue to be and afford a full life for their kids.
And so, the approach we’re taking in our conversations at CivicAction is a very holistic one, which means there needs to be at the highest level of decision making, much more alignment and communication and collaboration for us to find the solutions. There are too many fragmented one-off solutions that are treating the symptoms and we’re not really getting to the cause.
And so, I think we all aspire, everyone, to make sure we have a good home, that our kids are well fed, you know food in the fridge, that our children reach their full potential intellectually, that they can be, you know, be educated and so forth.
Housing is a foundational element of that and it is one of the key social determinants of health. And so, this is a really important thing that we need to humanize. Not only in what we see visibly, but all the invisible symptoms of the crisis.
00:11:03 Andrea
What gets me is exactly what you’re saying, you know your experience as a single mom. I think a lot of people, a lot of women and Two Spirit, trans, and nonbinary folks know what it’s like to be a caregiver of young people or sometimes elders that they’re taking care of, sometimes both at the same time, the sandwich generation.
It’s becoming more and more of this kind of crisis, where people who weren’t at risk before, had decent, good jobs, are now feeling that crunch and feeling that pressure—how much more so when they have other people that they’re taking care of? Can you tell us a bit about that? The kind of the middle-income workers that now are at a hidden risk. We don’t hear as much about the risk that they’re facing, but they’re at the precipice.
00:11:48 Leslie
Yeah, I mean, just to put some faces to think about what’s going on in the Greater Toronto Hamilton area.
Teachers, nurses, construction workers, bus drivers, folks in the hospitality industry, retail—they have jobs. Not only those that are making more than minimum wage, even young people who are making over the 100k mark annually.
More and more, the opportunities for them are being reduced because there are multiple factors. And these are people that power our city. These are the people that enable us to have the quality of life that this city region has been so proud of for so long. And if we’re not thinking really carefully about how they are getting all the wrap around supports that enable them to live here, work here, we’re really putting ourselves—and when I say ourselves, everybody, at the high end of the income bracket and already those who are at the lower end or no income, who are struggling, it’s only going to get worse.
And so, I see—and it’s why we’ve been paying attention at CivicAction to this really important invisible group; I think it makes up about 50% of the population of the Greater Toronto Hamilton area, that are in this squeeze.
And you know, if you think about it, a household that’s making 100,000-120,000—that’s two people with say some kids and they’re looking for, you know, ideally a three bedroom, could be a rental, could be a home. But look at where we are in the state of the cost of those and how much, when so much of their income has to be dedicated to that, what it takes away from, you know, skating lessons or the ability to have a date night or the ability to, you know, get your mom a gift—like just I think that squeeze is getting tighter and tighter and who it’s affecting is getting bigger and wider. And so, you know, we’re doing research right now to kind of, sort of lay that out more clearly so people understand it.
And it’s not to dismiss the importance of addressing the more visible symptoms of the housing crisis. There are some—there are lots of organizations, you know, working very hard at it, but in many respects they’re overwhelmed. They can’t keep up with the demand. So, part of addressing this group is to stem the tide of what we see happening. And so, I feel that this is energy well worth expending.
We have been able to bring together such a diverse group of interests, not just developers or builders, but social service providers, healthcare, the medical sector, academia, philanthropy, lots of folks who have come to the table and said, yes can we just focus on this for a moment? It feels like something we could put our hands around and find solutions for. Because I think many of us are feeling—given everything that’s happening internationally, globally—overwhelmed and want to find real places to act that have a wide degree of impact. And I think this is where, in the work we’re doing now, we really want to circle in on.
00:15:38 Andrea
And how important for ensuring gender equality, ensuring that anybody, you know, whoever they are, is able to have a good quality of life, be safe, be well, contribute, be a part of a community, belong. This is so so key, so thank you for your work there.
And it just brings us to my very last question. Alright, now what? This is the name of the podcast, and I just want you to share: what’s just one powerful takeaway you can give to our listeners? Based on your expertise and your experience and your knowledge and your passion, how we can all be better gender equality changemakers no matter who we are.
00:16:14 Leslie
We all know women who are doing superhuman things in their community, in their profession. You know, my takeaway for the listeners is walk with a torchlight, shine a light on those women who are—they’re literally lifting mountains but not being seen. And really acknowledge the role they play in ensuring that, you know, it’s not just the kids, you know, their peers, other women, people within their community, they’re unsung, often.
And I would say, you know, I was part of creating a small initiative for women in the land development industry, shining a spotlight on women who were doing things in a very male dominated industry. And when we started to have events, showcase them, the domino effect is yes, everybody got to know who they were more. But the confidence that it enabled them to have, which then enabled them to be more courageous, to do more.
And so, you know, we suffer—I don’t want to generalize, but we suffer from imposter syndrome all the time. Still, I suffer from it. Depending on what room I’m in, like, I don’t really—oh my God, how come I got invited? This is amazing. The more we can lift women up, and it’s got this kind of domino effect, it feeds our ability as women to be more courageous, stand our ground, lean in, whatever the terms are, in ways that are amazing.
So that, for everybody who’s listening, if it’s someone that you know, give them a shout out and make that light as bright as you can to the best of your ability.
00:18:17 Andrea
Alright, Now What?
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