Geraldine Cahill is the founding Director of UpSocial Canada facilitating social lab projects with diverse stakeholders to address systemic social challenges. For 15 years, Geraldine has led social innovation field building and ecosystem development, and is now motivated to explore and potentially integrate that learning with the growing mission-oriented innovation community.

Currently, Geraldine is working with the University of Alberta’s Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families (CUP) as they follow an Alberta town’s efforts to get in front of boom-and-bust oil and gas economic challenges by introducing an innovative post-secondary education tuition assistance program. As a result of the research conducted by CUP, they are now collaborating with town stakeholders on the development of a rural community wealth creation initiative. Geraldine has also begun work to grow the community finance ecosystem across Canada with long-time colleague, Jo Reynolds, co-managing the Catalyst Community Finance Initiative. This engagement will support maturing and connecting the field as well as facilitate greater interconnectedness with the social impact community more broadly.

In addition to her work on system challenges, Geraldine has developed social innovation curriculum for undergraduate university students and non-profit professionals and co-designed and facilitated a range of social innovation convening events.

Geraldine has become a trusted social innovation translator and collaborator. In 2017, she co-authored the book, Social Innovation Generation: Fostering a Canadian Ecosystem for Systems Change, which showcases a unique national social innovation partnership's field building efforts.