Bio

Paulina O’Kieffe-Anthony is an award winning artist, curator, arts educator and creative consultant based in Windsor, Ontario. As an artist, her high level accomplishments include being featured in When Sisters Speak, co-curating Scarborough: The Backbone as part of Toronto's Year of Public Art, co-producing the Spoken Soul Festival, and representing Toronto as a 2x national team finalist in the Canadian Festival Of Spoken Word. In 2019 she was a TEDx speaker and in 2020 an excerpt of her play How Jab Jab Saved the Pretty Mas was featured as part of Piece of Mine's Black Women in Theatre Festival. Her work has also been featured in media via Bell Fibe TV, Huffington Post Canada, AfroGlobal TV, Metro Morning and CBC Morning as well as in performances across Canada and Internationally alongside notable performers such as Dwayne Morgan and Randell Adjei.

With over 20+ years of experience in not for profit programs and infrastructure development Paulina runs her own consulting firm Creative Compass Solutions. Her 20 years of working in the not for profit and arts and culture sectors have given her multiple opportunities to support organizations to successfully acquire over $1 million dollars in funding for projects and ongoing operations as her expertise lies in her understanding of the arts and public funding grants processes as well as having significant exposure to granting bodies through her experience as a past grant reviewer for the Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Director for ArtReach, a smaller youth project funder. Prior to this she was the Executive Director of SKETCH Working Arts and Executive Director of ArtReach, a youth arts funder. She is an active member of the Toronto Arts Council, informing and consulting on their recent strategy to support Black artists and communities and currently chairs their Black Arts Granting Program and now a board member of the council, sitting as the chair of Black Arts Grants program. She also sits as Chair of the Board for RISE Arts and Community Services and is a program mentor with NIA Centre for the Arts and Toronto Arts Foundation.

Paulina has been an advocate for diversifying leadership in the arts scene, and has created a number of programs that support new generation, Black, Indigenous and community leaders of colour to build their leadership capacities to break through systemic barriers and move into positions of leadership including the NextUP Leaders Lab at SKETCH. Her work and leadership in the community sector was recognized as she was the recipient of the Toronto Community Foundation Vital People Award (2016) and again when I was recognized as one of 150 Black Women Making Herstory (as featured on CBC) for my contribution to building the arts scene in Toronto.