Sabrina Meherally's Linkedin Analytics

Learn about our upcoming Reimagining Research Cohort here: bit.ly/Reimagining-Research ___ If you're here for the job titles - keep scrolling. If you want to know me, keep reading. I am the descendant of ancestors, who've moved through repeated cycles of loss and survival. Who survived colonial-induced famines in Gujarat, endured and escaped the violent dictatorship of Idi Amin in East Africa, and shed parts of their identity to assimilate in so-called Canada. I am fuelled by wonder and experimentation. "I wonder why", "I wonder how", "I wonder what would happen if..." are questions that have led me down many different paths. I founded Pause and Effect in 2019, as I began to reckon with the way coloniality informs modern design. We are now a collective of dreamers and designers, guided by a vision for inclusive, decolonized, and liberated futures. Our work is to transform the institution of design, by cultivating responsibility for our collective and individual impact on people, land, and systems. Our Relational Design framework challenges dominant worldviews and assumptions that underpin traditional "human-centered design" approaches, and invite us to create through an ethic of love, relationality and care. We offer transformative learning experiences that touch all levels of the human experience, mind, body, and spirit. And we consult organizations to build a responsible design practice that accounts for social and environmental impact/wellbeing. I believe that "how we are" creates the future. My every day experiments align with visions of a liberated and decolonized life. Becoming the future in the present. Octavia Butler taught me that change is the only known constant, shaped through forethought, practice, and preparation. And so, I build and experiment to shape change for a flourishing and abundant future. I am an auntie who dreams that her niece will live on healthy land, in a world that never steals her laughter, deprives her of naps, or makes her question her worth. Where she has a roof over her head, a belly full of nutritious food, clean air to breathe, and a community to keep her safe and loved. I do this work to shape change, so that this dream, and the dreams of my Indigenous, Black, Queer, Muslim and Disabled kin, can too become reality.