Johanna Niles

Founder | Educator | Cultural Advocate | Sister

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​I am an African-Caribbean Canadian educator, developmental services consultant, and social entrepreneur rooted in lived experience and cultural accountability. As the founder of Builducate Inc., I bring together over 15 years of professional and community-based experience to address inequities in developmental services for Black families; work inspired by the most personal of sources: my sister, Nellie.​

 

The journey began when I was not yet two years old, the day Nellie was born. Her developmental disability didn’t just shift our family dynamic; it introduced us to a service system that wasn’t designed with families like ours in mind. As an immigrant family navigating services that lacked cultural relevance, I watched my mother become an advocate, researcher, and teacher out of necessity. That experience planted a seed that has grown into Builducate Inc.: a space where cultural access, equity, and empowerment are not afterthoughts, but starting points.​

 

My work is grounded in creating spaces that reflect the fullness of who we are, race, language, gender, ability, spirituality, and place;  and in building from the cultural knowledge that already exists in our communities. Through Builducate’s two core pillars, Build and Educate, I collaborate with governments, non-profit organizations, and grassroots leaders locally and internationally, particularly in the Caribbean and across African diasporas.

 

From curriculum development to service design, caregiver training to podcasting with my sister, I believe in story as strategy and in community as catalyst. I’m here to help build what’s missing, and to educate for what’s next, always in partnership with the people these systems were never built for.

 

​Let’s reimagine what developmental services can look like, together.