Our Mission 
Our mission at the Community Innovation Lab (Co-ilab) is to harness and strengthen the talent and skill sets of post secondary youth by facilitating experiential learning to jointly address complex community challenges and in the process build new skills and 

increase opportunities for employment.

Our People

A common thread...

We see ourselves as passionate, curious out-of-the-box type thinkers, doers, perhaps innovation explorers or creative risk takers, defining a new kind of organizational sub-culture. We are eerily connected in many ways - we are driven by human  centered processes, have experienced the world of entrepreneurism, share a culture of iteration and are secretly intrigued by design thinking and the impact of  digital media on communities. Our greatest inspiration and grounding emerges from building relationships with the Community, Academia, Public and Private partners to harness a cross disciplinary approach to address Post Secondary Youth Employability and skills development in Social Entrepreneurship. We have therefore coined the acronym - CAPP (Communities, Academia, Pubilc and Private Partners) to describe our approach to addressing the "underemployment crisis" that post secondary youth face upon graduation.  

Our plan is to experiment with this system failure and invite CAPP partners to collectively design an innovation support system that would respond to and foster youth social entrepreneurship and the development of transferable employer preferred skills . 

Our plan  is to succeed and end up with many winners, from a network of unexpected community solutions, insights, partners and an army of young innovators, all skilled to take on any employer or change the world as social entrepreneurs or as "designers of societies".  

 Board of Directors 

Dr Catherine Chandler-Crichlow 

Dr. Catherine Chandler-Crichlow is the Executive Director of the Centre of Excellence for Financial Services Education. She is Past Director of Corporate Programs at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto as well as, Associate Vice President – Education 

and Training at TD Bank Financial Group where she had responsibility for the design, development, delivery and evaluation of human capital development programs for the firm. Dr Chandler-Crichlow has over 30 years of experience in human capital development with a focus on executive and leadership development; curriculum development; technology-mediated distance learning and program evaluation.  

Dr Ramesh Makhija

Dr. Ramesh Makhija is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Trent University and President of R & R Laboratories, a consulting company in environmental health and safety. He is an active community leader and the recipient of several awards including the 2007 City of Peterborough Civic Award and more recently, the 2012 Queen Elizabeth 11 Diamond Jubilee medal for Community service. Dr Makhija  currently sits on the Board at NOD. Diary Products Ltd., Peterborough Green-Up and TD Friends of the Environment in Peterborough.

Penny Smith

Penny brings over 30 years of management and board governance working with Not for profits in the Durham Region. In addition she has spent the past twelve years working with people with special needs and is currently the Executive Director of CARD.  Penny is also a Grant Review Team Member with the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Durham Haliburton, Kawartha and Pine Ridge.

Chris Gillis (bio coming soon)

David Tuley (bio coming soon)

Pramilla Ramdahani

Pramilla is Co-Founder of the Community Innovation Lab and Interim Executive Director. She is currently a Board Director with the Durham Local Training Board, Past Director with the Toronto Workforce Innovations Group and Past Chair of the Ontario Trillium Foundation Grant Review Team for Durham, Halliburton, Kawartha and Pine Ridge. Pramilla holds an MBA in Community Economic Development from the Shannon School of Business and a BA in Sociology from the University of Toronto. She has also completed the Executive Program in Social Entrepreneurship at Stanford University. 

A Special thanks to our Partners

University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Durham College Global Classroom 

The Student Association of Durham College and UOIT

The Whitby Chamber of Commerce

 The City of Oshawa

 YMCA, DYSIP  

Management Advisory Services, MAS 

ICA Associates Inc.