Meet the Faculty
School4Civics: Meet the Faculty
Ian Chamandy
Ken Aber
Megan Harris
Sean Hill
Ryan Merkley
Chad Rogers
Ian Chamandy and Ken Aber, Blueprint Business Architecture
About Blueprint:
Can you explain in seven words or less why voters should choose you? If you are uncertain, voters are even more confused about why they should choose you. Ian and Ken will give you an introduction to how to create a Blueprint for your campaign that will inspire you, your campaign team and voters in your riding.
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Ian Chamandy
Ian is a founding partner of Blueprint Business Architecture. He started his career in advertising working in account management and strategic planning working with packaged goods, business-to-business and travel clients. Following his advertising career, Ian founded Chamandy Computer Services, the first computer consultancy in Canada specializing in the visual communications industries.
Next, Ian co-founded, and spent 15 years running, YOUtv, a company that developed, sold and managed format licenses and marketing programs around the world for the “Speakers Corner” programming concept. In this capacity, Ian created branding, marketing and sales strategies for national broadcasters and local TV stations, including CBS, Fox, Post Newsweek and Meredith in the US, Flextech Television in the UK, Venevision in Venezuela, El Tiempo in Colombia, Jyrki In Finland, and Citytv, MuchMusic, CBC, YTV. He also designed and executed branding, marketing and communications programs for Procter & Gamble, Bell, Warner Lambert, Labatt, Molson, Loblaws and The Lung Association in Canada, and Kroger and New York State Department of Health in the US.
Ian has been married for 15 years and has a 10 year old son. He has a BA in social psychology from the University of Waterloo.
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Ken Aber
Ken is a founding partner of Blueprint Business Architecture. He has spent his entire creating innovative strategic partnerships and media programs for blue chip companies in Canada. As a partner in and president of HYPN (now PhD, a division of Omnicom), Ken led marketing and communications programs for Labatt, Cara (Swiss Chalet and Harvey’s), American Express and Alberto Culver. He was also instrumental in transforming the role of media companies from simply buyers of advertising to actually buying, producing and packaging programming for clients and broadcasters.
Prior to HYPN, Ken worked with MacDonald’s, Ford and Ontario Tourism. He has been a special consultant to Loblaws for seven years and drove the development of its “Blue” and “Joe” brands. In addition to building his clients’ businesses, Ken has created his own. He conceived and developed the Hero Certified Burger chain and sold it to Lettieri.
Ken has a MBA from Harvard University.
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Megan Harris
Megan Harris is communications and public affairs professional who has extensive experience providing strategic issues and crisis management advice to CEO’s, Cabinet Ministers, government officials and community leaders. She has represented clients in the pharmaceutical, transportation, agricultural, manufacturing, information technology, academic and non-for profit sectors.
Ms. Harris began her career as a country strategist with the Royal Bank Financial Group. In this role she conducted sector, political and economic analysis of the countries in the Middle East, Africa and North America and established the parameters for the banks relationship with the countries from these regions.
After leaving the financial sector, Ms. Harris joined the public sector where she held a number of roles including: Special Advisor, Science and Technology to the Ontario Minister of Energy, Science and Technology. She later had responsibilities as the Fiscal and Economic Advisor to the Minister of Finance.
In the 2004 Federal election, Ms. Harris was the Conservative Party of Canada candidate in the riding of Toronto-Centre.
Ms. Harris has extensive media experience. She hosted two public affairs shows on the IChannel. Her guests included: Conrad Black, Sally Armstrong, Andrew Coyne and Paul Heinbecker. She has attended several G8 summits and provided analysis for CBC Newsworld. She has been a regular guest on several public affairs shows and has published opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines. In 2007, she was selected by MacLean’s magazine as one of Canada’s most respected personalities.
She is a frequent speaker on public affairs issues such as, the participation of young people in politics and diversity. She has also been very active in the community. She is a Director of Gilda’s Club and The Churchill Society. She is an active member of the Founding Chapter of Equal Voice Canada. Megan was a founding Champion and mentor for the Mentoring Partnership (TRIEC), Vice-Chair, of the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy, and director of the Couchiching Institute for Public Affairs, Horizons for Youth and Green Power Canada. Ms. Harris also served as advisor to the Conference Board of Canada’s groundbreaking Study: “Toward Maximizing the Talents of Visible Minorities” and its companion guide “Business Critical Maximizing the Talents of Visible Minorities.”
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Sean Hill
Sean Hill is a campaign management, strategy and leadership skills specialist. Sean Hill’s campaign experience spans 10 years and over 30 federal, provincial, city council, public & catholic school board and park board campaigns in Toronto, Vancouver, Hamilton and Northern Ontario. He also has over 6 years in municipal government as the Executive Assistant to a Toronto City Councillor leading important high profile issue campaigns which yielded the creation of a drive-thru by-law, pesticide by-law for private lawns, light rail transit expansion on St. Clair West, the “green, yellow & red” restaurant disclosure system and a City-wide smoking by-law to name a few. He also has played an important organizing role for the annual Caribana Festival for the last 7 years.
Sean Hill’s experience as a leadership workshop facilitator and trainer includes preparing municipal candidates and campaign teams for the Toronto & York Region Labour Council, Maytree’s “School 4 Civics” and the Ontario NDP. His specialty is leading campaign teams and candidates to construct their strategic plan and refine their campaign narrative.
Like his Stratagem partner, Sean Hill has a theatre background and education, prior to a life in politics. He was educated at York University and enjoyed a successful 10-year professional career as a theatre director, writer, performer and company manager, with shows in many Canadian cities and towns including Toronto, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal, with renowned troupes such as the Company of Sirens.
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Ryan Merkley
Ryan Merkley is a senior policy advisor to Mayor David Miller. He is also the founding partner and creative director of Antfarm, a strategic marketing and communications agency working exclusively in the area of social change.
Throughout his career, Ryan has worked with non-profit, corporate, and government clients on both national and local campaigns. As one of the architects of Engineers Without Borders, Ryan’s work as Chief Communications Officer helped establish EWB as one of the leading international development charities in Canada.
Ryan has considerable expertise in development and management of research, strategy, and the development of campaigns from concept and design, to implementation and evaluation. His portfolio includes strategies, national campaigns, websites and viral marketing. His clients have included the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Centre for Social Innovation, and Journalists for Human Rights.
Ryan has also served as a policy advisor and political consultant to Toronto City Councillor Adam Giambrone, Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone, and City of Toronto Councillor and Budget Chief Shelley Carroll. At the City of Toronto, he has played a key role in the development of policy, strategic communications, and political campaigns, including the successful launch of Transit City, Toronto’s vision for a citywide light rail network.
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Chad Rogers
Chad Rogers is a Principal at Navigator with more than a decade’s experience providing strategic planning, research, and communications advice to government, corporate and not-for-profit clients.
Most recently, Chad worked with the Washington, DC based National Democratic Institute as director of their programs in Kosovo and Armenia respectively, overseeing multi-million dollar democracy and governance assistance programs for political parties, parliaments and civil society organizations in newly democratic nations. He conducted high-level training with the political leadership of Armenia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova and Serbia.
Chad worked as a Senior Advisor to Nova Scotia Premier John Hamm. In this capacity he employed public opinion research to craft issues and message management strategy for the provincial government.
Having previously worked on Parliament Hill as both a legislative and communications assistant to Members of Parliament and Senators, he has an in-depth knowledge of Canada’s Parliament and its committees, caucuses and procedures. Chad has worked on political campaigns at the federal, provincial and municipal level throughout Canada.
He is a board member of the Kosova Democratic Institute and is a member in good standing of the Public Affairs Association of Canada (PAAC) and the Market Research & Intelligence Association (MRIA). Chad has trained at the RIVA Qualitative Research Training Institute.
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