Journalist / Consultant / President, DiversiPro Inc., Toronto, ON. Born: Jamaica.
Hamlin Grange is the President of DiversiPro Inc., a diversity consulting company which helps organizations succeed in being reflective, responsive and relevant to the changing markets and communities they serve.
Before establishing DiversiPro in 2000, Hamlin was an award-winning journalist and television host (TVO and CBC), and a journalism instructor at Ryerson University. He has mentored dozens of professionals from under-represented communities, while opening doors and removing barriers for hundreds more. He has made presentations and conducted workshops on diversity to media managers and senior leaders in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden as well as South Africa, the Caribbean and the United States and Canada.
Throughout his professional and community service career, Hamlin has been an active leader on initiatives designed to open minds and opportunities. He has led or co-led initiatives in the media industry that have created dialogue and relationships between powerful media executives and members of under-represented groups such as persons who have disabilities, immigrants, people of colour and youth living in vulnerable communities.
Community: Member of the Toronto Police Services Board, Board member of Canadian Women in Communications, a former Trustee of the Royal Ontario Museum, and former member of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of Greater Toronto; co-founder of the Harry Jerome Awards and the Harry Jerome Scholarship Fund; founding board member of the Black Business and Professional Association; co-founder of Innoversity, as well as co-founder and Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Black Journalists.
Honours: Harry Jerome Award, Tropicana Community Builder, YMCA Peace Medallion; B’Nai Brith Human Rights Award for Journalism; Black Film and Video Achievement Award and awards for Leadership; the African Canadian Achievement Award and awards from the New York and Houston International Film Festivals; inclusion in Who’s Who in Black Canada 2.
Favourite quote: “Diversity…is not casual, liberal tolerance of anything and everything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is – in action – the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind, have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do. And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that will protect us all. We are meant to be here together.” – William M. Chase
Given the chance, what would you love to do that you have not done yet? Live and work for an extended period in an African country.
Who inspires you? People who refuse to accept things as they are.
Why do you do what you do? It allows me to live my passion and embrace my personal core values.