Yasmine Djerbal, PhD., (she/her) is dedicated to promoting educational equity, grounding her work in anti-racist and inclusive teaching practices that seek to create fair and supportive learning environments for all students. She advocates for research-informed, evidence-based strategies that help not only learners but also educators thrive. Actively involved in both research and teaching, Yasmine’s work focuses on critical race studies, immigration, citizenship law, gender, and Islamophobia. Through her efforts, she aims to challenge systemic inequalities and foster greater understanding and inclusion in education and beyond.
About
Our Mission
At Designing Shift, we believe that education is a catalyst for systemic transformation. Our mission is to equip educators, educational support professionals, researchers, and community members with the tools to embed inclusive, equitable, decolonial, intersectional, accessible, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive principles into their practice. Through activist methodologies, we foster a culture of critical reflection and action that challenges colonial and neoliberal norms in education and organizational development.
Our Values
We are guided by principles of:
- Pluriversal Justice & Equity – Centering historically excluded voices and fostering systemic change.
- Collaboration & Relationality – Building meaningful partnerships rooted in reciprocity and care.
- Critical Pedagogy – Reimagining learning spaces as sites for liberation and transformation.
- Actionable Design – Providing practical, evidence-based strategies to effect real-world change.
- Accessibility & Inclusion – Ensuring knowledge, tools, and training are accessible to diverse communities.
What We Offer
Contact Us
What We Offer
Workshops & Training
Through both online and in-person trainings, we guide participants through a structured approach to integrating equity principles into educational and organizational settings. These interactive sessions and modules support learners in designing impactful interventions that align with their values and professional contexts.
Consulting Services
We work with researchers, non-profit organizations, and businesses to:
- Develop strategic interventions that align with equity-centered values.
- Transform organizational culture through decolonial and activist design practices.
- Support capacity-building for teams seeking to integrate equity principles into their work.
Contact Us
The Designing Shift Team
Rebecca Sweetman
Rebecca Sweetman (she/her) is an educator, researcher, and designer dedicated to transforming learning environments and organizational cultures through equity-centered, decolonial approaches. A PhD Candidate in Health Sciences at Carleton University, her research explores transition design as a framework for systemic change, reimagining educational and organizational structures to foster more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures. She integrates critical pedagogy, activist design, and strategic interventions for culture change, employing anti-oppressive, anti-colonial, feminist, and pluriversal transition design frameworks to develop applied interventions that challenge colonial and neoliberal norms and promote equity in educational design.
safe space
With the knowledge and skills gained from this course, I’d like to create a safe space for all participations in my course – and have a decolonization lens for the curriculum development work that I’m doing. Great resources that pushed me to reflect on my practice. I also really enjoyed how the OER has been designed.
Participant, October 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
enlightening
I particularly enjoyed the positionality exercise and the section about colours and shot angles – these were completely new to me. Even if I haven’t created videos or will not in a near future, it is very helpful to know when choosing multimedia to include in a course. Very enlightening.
Participant, October 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
powerful
I found this training to be inspiring and insightful! I am grateful that my understanding of how designers are oppressors has been deepened. The primacy of English and text, the lack of imagery to support understanding, the use of images that reinforce oppressive stereotypes…it is powerful to look at all of my design decisions as a graphic artist through a pluriversal lens.
Participant, January 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
feeling seen
I’ve never seen my situation acknowledged in any coursework I’ve done: I’m a single Mom of 2, and I have several jobs (precarious gigs) to make ends meet. I often have to get up at 3am to get my work done, since my workday ends at 3pm. I’m tired all the time, and life often feels like an incredible struggle. But in this course, I read my story at a couple of points…there was reference to people exactly like me, trying to keep it all together. I felt seen and acknowledged. Thank you for this!
Participant, January 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
interactive
Love this course, and very honoured to be a part of it. I loved how interactive it is. There is so much to be gained from these reminders and reinforcements for how to be inclusive.
Participant, January 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
decolonize
When I started the course with Rebecca and Yasmine, I knew that there were accessibility standards, and I knew that a refresher on these would be very useful. I had no idea how much MORE this course would cover. HOW I organize information on a website, or a poster or a social media post, from the colours and images I choose to the way I prioritize some information over other sections of text…all of these have implications for anyone raised in a culture that is not my own. Trying to first see Western ways of thinking and communicating, and then learning how decolonize the way I present information…I needed a full course to do this.
Participant, January 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
community
The course content was an excellent resource, but also the community that was formed around the course content. It was very useful to talk through my un-learning process with others who were experiencing the same “lightbulb turning on” moments.
Participant, January 2023 Cohort
Activist Design Training
leadership
Yasmine and Rebecca are not only knowledgeable and competent in their respective fields, but they are also deeply committed to moving I-EDIAA to challenge and transform colonized epistemologies. Their educational leadership promotes an authenticity, humanity and social justice perspective as they guide colleagues through the course.This unique opportunity for educational support professionals and those who create media is not common in our work. Often professional development training consists of an asynchronous lesson, journal article or webinar, all passive forms of learning. However, this experience promotes building collective knowledge, self-reflection, and application of skill all within a caring and supportive environment encouraging personal growth for participants.
Peer Reviewer
Activist Design Training