About

Hey! I’m James, sometimes Jimothy, usually equipped with jellybeans and always ready to help!

I value developing human thought to be more open, collaborative and critical with the goal of realising the possibilities of a greater future.

In order to achieve this I spend time reading, writing and designing solutions to every problem I encounter.

Scroll on to learn more about me in-depth!

I started my working life teaching Karate at the City of Toronto in 2011 at age 15.

In this role I designed 9- week classes for students ranging from 3 years old all the way to 60+

I also ran city summer camps as the location coordinator

and I taught visual art classes as well, peep the adventure time banner, it was my signature go to theme for 9 summers!

Later in 2012, I graduated high school as an Ontario scholar (a designation for an over 80% academic average)

I started at Starbucks as a barista and became a Coffee Master before resigning in 2016

In 2012, I started at Ryerson University studying Urban and Regional Planning with a minor in Economics

In 2016, I won the Tyendof Award for Outstanding Studio Project. In this group, I was the team writer and was in-charge of using my strong writing skills to produce a cohesive report voice.

while @ Ryerson here are some things I achieved!

Main Street Initiative (Capstone Studio Project); Client: MNHBC Consultancy
Developed a methodology to study “what makes successful mainstreets function?”
Created a detailed and comprehensive matrix of values in which to study mainstreets then conducted analysis on two Mainstreets in Toronto: the Junction and Mount Pleasant Neighbourhoods
Conducted Intercept surveys and used Planning theory analysis to round out data collection methodology and glean additional insight
Quantified values and presented correlations and hypothesis to clients, Methodology created was adopted as protocol for further studies by client

Traffic Mitigation in Riverdale; Client: City of Toronto Councillor, Paula Fletcher, Ward 30
Studied traffic conditions in Riverdale
Attended community group meetings and conducted several site visits
Conducted through case study analysis and made 7 key recommendations in report
Report and researched case studies were adopted by Toronto City Council June 2015

Student Thesis Topic: How Memeplex Theory can be applied to the analysis of Complex Social Problems or “Metaproblems”
Researched and Proved Metaproblems are “Memes” relative to the socioeconomic and political systems in which they occur
Case study analysis looked at 5 major cities worldwide and the historical context of the countries in which they are located

Rowing
Scouted by Rowing Canada’s Row to the Podium Program (2015-2017)
Trained to compete in single sculling, double sculling and quad sweeping

In 2016, I dropped out of university to start my own Not-for-profit practical think-tank. an organisation that designs policy and solutions and then puts its ideas into action! I saw that my profession wasn’t addressing the real needs of communities and I wanted to create a solution that put the power of planners in the hands of the public.

What a risk! but the pay off? a world made by YOU FOR YOU!

After a year of running up against the “not-for profit trap” I returned to university to complete my degree coursework.

The not-for-profit trap is when money for new organisations are tied to financial records, every funding source we found required the organization have at least 1 year of financial records, even grants for new organisations. So P:HC started a newsletter and started a record buying operational software like mail chimp.

I dropped out again, I got pulled back into P:HC the call of P:HC was too strong compared to academia.

In 2018, P:HC was rebooted with Project: Atlantic Mosaic, where we designed a plan which would build a zero emission complete factory in Nova Scotia developing quantum chips and modular computing nodes for a quantum internet. The complete factory recycled all the by products and pollutants into useful outputs. this factory would be built on native land, so we designed investment zones across all indigenous land in Atlantic Canada to create an energy board and strategy to upgrade all indigenous homes using the usage of sustainable energy.

Unfortunately, 1/3 key partners didn’t want to sign on to Project: Atlantic Mosaic so it was shelved, but we move! P:HC got a Summer Student Grant and our team increased from 1 to 9! this allowed P:HC to grow and start our social media channels, produce video content and research some key ideas that we still champion today!

We expanded and modelled the city membership program, researched and developed our energy models, grounded our expansion projections costs and created all our video content until our recent media reboot. we had some hiccups like losing our street video sd card but we had some scrappy ingenuity managing with several financial roadblocks to growth.

After our interns left, I took our internal research and produced our Meshwork Litepaper! a comprehensive paper on how to change the world by adjusting the cost on money to align with planetary boundaries and closed system economics, in this paper we highlighted some core ideas that were cutting edge at the time such as how to develop transformers for ai use (however we foresaw the issues and didn’t intend to release it to the public, sorry job market and environment!)

2018-2020 We applied to multiple grants and proposed many different projects, unfortunately none of them were supported, we also didn’t continue using the Summer Student Grant program due to issues we saw in how it was administered (the funding didn’t align with university schedules so by the time funds were received it was harder to find star students, school ends in may, ambitious people look before then, funds weren’t released until July)

2018-2020 I worked as a freelance Digital Product Designer and worked with clients to create:

A digital coaching app

A online coaching school with paywalls and several unique users

In this process I met with clients weekly, researched and learned about the coaching profession and accreditation process. I developed a holistic plan that included recruitment, company culture and internal operational policies. (project was covered by a NDA)

In 2020-2023, I worked for the Black Lily Organization, while working there I served as a founding employee and helped set up key systems and policies. I assisted with grant proposals and when we received a Grant from the Carold Institute, I developed courses on U.B.I, helped create an organization zine and developed workshops on other topics such as politics and anti-black racism.

Covid hit in 2020 and in April 2021-August 2021, I worked at Toronto’s Mass Immunisation clinic as a support assistant C, in this role I handled patient registration and support the centres logistical operation.

Sept 2022 – Feb 2023 I went back to school once again to finish my degree, I also worked as a research assistant, I was part of a study of the black experience in planning in Canada. I dropped out again.

Jan 2023, I had been scaling P:HC with student group projects at various other institutions and had a band of staff that I recruited from various platforms. we launched a 5 sprint series (research, design, development, testing, launch) to build P:HC mobile apps using a free program that paid for internships, I maxed out the program by hacking the systems bottleneck for a low volume of matches (I recruited outside the platform specifically looking for people who qualified for their program and got them to sign up after passing interviews)
at peak we had 170 team members all managed by me directly in several departments including HR, design, mobile development, frontend development, backend development, 4 special apis teams and Dev-ops.

The program stopped after sprint 2 (design), we went from 170 to under 30, we used smaller focus student projects again while we entered into a long development sprint that last over 2 years to get to mvps of 3 mobile apps and 3 web apps with unique function per platform and cross platform architecture. currently P:HC is on hiatus until we can get funding to restore our servers and continue building our platform.

Notable Articles, throughout the years due to my role as chief idea officer I have to issue my thoughts on organization policy and represent our work as think-tank, one article that has been instrumental and widely taught in universities is our article on social equity.

other notable works include:

meshwork litepaper

we created cheaters, stop letting them kill our planet

we need strong international governance

P:HC Policy Series israeli – Palestinian Peace Project