Work at CSI for the day with our new Lounge Pass!
Staff & Board » Colleen Mahaffie
Headshot of Colleen Mahaffie, Marketing and Communications Manager at CSI

Colleen Mahaffie

Marketing and Communications Manager

The ability to communicate clearly and effectively is a foundational skill, which Colleen saw in her youth as a camp counselor with toddlers and as a tutor to high school students. She graduated from Villanova University with a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and worked in marketing for travel and interior design before finding her place in the impact sector. Colleen worked for an environmental nonprofit, Forests Ontario, prior to joining CSI as the Marketing and Communications Manager. Putting people and planet first is a core value for Colleen, and one that she is happy to embody at CSI. Here, she works closely with the team to manage the external communications of the Centre and helps to market its many offerings, ideals, and members. She also has a passion for good design, typography, and the Oxford comma.

Colleen moved to Toronto from the beautiful green mountain state of Vermont. You can usually find Colleen hanging with her rescue pup, Bennie, and exploring the many neighbourhoods of Toronto. She’s always happy to chat about craft beer, politics, and Grey’s Anatomy.

Stories by Colleen Mahaffie

orange shirt day
September 30 is Orange Shirt Day and Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It’s a day to honour the survivors and victims of the residential school system and reflect on the atrocities Canada committed against Indigenous Peoples.
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We have some big news! The world is changing and so must CSI! We told our members earlier today and now we want to tell you. CSI has made the decision to put 720 Bathurst up for sale and consolidate our operations into CSI Spadina.
CSI Spadina in the ground floor kitchen, looking out towards the lounge and meeting rooms. In the foreground is a kitchen counter, with waffles, toppings, and glasses of coffees and teas. In the background, CSI CEO Tonya Surman is speaking into a microphone on the left. In the middle and on the right, a variety of people stand and sit, listening to her speak.
One of the keys to CSI's magic is our Community Animator Program (CAP) and, specifically, the Community Animators themselves! Through this program, we've worked with more than 1,000 exceptional individuals who have each brought a little something different, and a little sparkle, to our spaces. And we're so glad to have had them in our community, because we've learned that each and every one of them has some exceptional talents, skills, and experiences to offer the world!  
Third floor lounge of CSI Spadina. In the foreground is a light blue loveseat sofa. In the background, we see two people working separately at coworking desks and tables. On the ceiling is a chandelier; to the right, a progress Pride flag.
The CSI staff team includes Pride veterans, newcomers, and everywhere in between! This year, as we celebrated Pride in our spaces and with our member community, we turned to our staff team to learn what Pride means to them. Some experienced it for the first time this year and were awash in the joy; others delighted in the fact that Pride remains such a fun celebration decades later. Others noted the increasing corporatization, which draws our attention away from the central premise of Pride - a protest.
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CSI is many things - a coworking space, a non-profit organization, and a launchpad - but, first and foremost, we are a community. A community of innovators, of changemakers, of neighbours, of people putting people and planet first. And the awesome work that our members do, each and every day, never ceases to amaze us! So of course, we do our best to highlight our members whenever possible. Recently, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Molly Bannerman, Director of Women HIV/Aids Initiative (WHAI), a community-based response to HIV and AIDS among cis and trans women in Ontario. Below is an edited summary of our chat, where we discussed the work of WHAI and their latest Collective Action Community Change report.
Canadian Innovation Week Banner
It's Canadian Innovation Week 2023! This year, we're celebrating with our members and highlighting the world changing work that they do. We're spotlighting just a few of our thousands of members here in the themes of Canadian Innovation Week 2023 - be sure to come by our spaces or join our community to meet the rest of our innovators!