Fareeda Lakhani

Fareeda serves as the EDI and Programs Officer at the Acceleration Consortium, bringing with her over eight years of experience in programs, operations, and finance within the realms of research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Fareeda has dedicated recent years to championing equity-deserving groups, focusing on dismantling systemic barriers within the innovation ecosystem. Her expertise in this area includes the development and implementation of an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) strategy and action plan for the SOSCIP project. Most notably, she has recently excelled as the Lead Project Officer for the Black Entrepreneurship Program with FedDev Ontario, where she worked on advancing support for Black entrepreneurs. She brings a passion fostering inclusive and equitable innovation environments to the Acceleration Consortium, where she hopes to continues to driving impactful change and supporting diverse communities in the innovation ecosystem.