Lorraine Randell helps organizations make sense of complexity so they can make better decisions, design better services, and move work forward with greater clarity.
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Lorraine Randell helps organizations make sense of complexity so they can make better decisions, design better services, and move work forward with greater clarity. She is a consultant, researcher, facilitator, and learning designer whose work brings together strategy, systems thinking, design research, foresight, service design, organizational learning, and visual sensemaking. Lorraine is often brought in when the path forward is unclear, the evidence is scattered, stakeholders see the situation differently, and the first task is not simply to solve the problem, but to understand what problem is actually being solved.
Her strength is helping teams get unstuck. She creates structured, generative spaces where people can surface assumptions, make thinking visible, explore different interpretations, and identify practical next steps. Her experience is unusually broad, spanning public, private, non-profit, NGO, government, and Fortune 500 contexts.
Her work spans public-sector transformation, service and operating model redesign, housing and community systems, health and wellbeing, education, civic futures, organizational learning, and innovation capacity-building.
A consistent thread across her work is translation: helping people move between lived experience, institutional realities, evidence, strategy, and action. She is skilled at turning complex material into usable artefacts, including insight reports, workshop tools, visual frameworks, service models, value propositions, governance models, curricula, decision-making criteria, operating models, and implementation roadmaps.
Project and Facilitation Lead at Ontario Securities Commission / OCAD U CO (2026 – Present)
Designed and facilitated a sequence of workshops and working sessions with the Horizon Scanning Group. Supported participants to move from signals to structured interpretation, future contexts, behavioural and market change pathways, areas for attention, and practical operating considerations for horizon scanning as an organizational capability.
Research and Engagement Design Lead at Multifaith Housing Initiative (2026 – Present)
Developed an ethical, human-centred approach to interviews and survey-informed strategic planning conversations. Adapted questions for board, staff, tenants, donors, faith communities, partners, and sector stakeholders while maintaining a coherent shared interview guide.
Strategy, Research, and Engagement Project Lead at Province of Nova Scotia Cyber Security & Digital Solutions / Code for Canada (2024 – 2025)
Led multi-phase systems research and cross-government engagement to support a future intake model, value proposition, value chain, measurement approach, role clarity, and transformation pathways for Service Design and Delivery.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at City of Toronto Customer Experience Division / Code for Canada (2024 – Present)
Designed and led collaborative work to develop guiding principles, adaptive learning processes, prioritization metrics, engagement pathways, and communications materials for a multi-year service enhancement and transformation initiative spanning 28 municipal divisions.
Research and Engagement Project Lead at OCAD University Situation Lab / Democracy Xchange / TMU Leadership Lab (2021)
Initiated foresight research exploring democratic participation, trust, polarization, governance imaginaries, and civic futures. Conducted foresight research, trend development, stakeholder research strategy, and interviews.
Research Team Lead at Archipelago of Design / IMDC Network / OCAD University (2020 – 2021)
Co-developed research strategy, completed literature review and stakeholder interviews, supervised coding, conducted analysis and synthesis, and developed research insights for a defence and security-focused design inquiry.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association / SHS Consulting / National Housing Strategy Solutions Lab (2020 – 2022)
Led multi-stakeholder research and engagement examining structural constraints and innovation opportunities in non-profit housing. Designed and facilitated collaborative workshops, synthesized patterns, and supported sector-wide policy advocacy and reform-oriented strategy.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at Blue Door Shelters / Habitat for Humanity GTA / SHS Consulting / National Housing Strategy Solutions Lab (2020 – 2022)
Supported a systems-design lab exploring affordable supportive home ownership for people who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness. Work included environmental scanning, research tool development, stakeholder research, coding, synthesis, workshop design, facilitation, and iterative program development.
Research and Engagement Design Lead at City of Toronto / KerrSmith / OCAD U CO (2018)
Supported project funding strategy, designed and facilitated community engagement workshops, analyzed research and workshop outputs, synthesized insights, and authored report content and a vision statement for resilience planning.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at Toronto Employment & Social Services / Overlap Associates (2016 – 2018)
Led network mapping, ethnographic observation, research method selection, participatory research engagements, multi-stakeholder co-design sessions, analysis, synthesis, insight reporting, communications planning, and implementation support for service modernization.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at Innovation Works / Overlap Associates (2021)
Designed collaborative conversation structures to support social innovation ecosystem development and cross-sector learning.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at eCampus Ontario (2021)
Designed and facilitated employee engagement sessions to support strategic visioning and organizational alignment.
Research and Engagement Design Lead at Nordicity / Lord Cultural Resources / OCAD U CO (2019)
Supported collaborative development of evaluation criteria for arts discoverability initiatives.
Research and Engagement Design Lead at Nordicity / National Ballet of Canada / OCAD U CO (2019)
Supported digital engagement pilot development through collaborative design methods.
Strategy, Research and Engagement Project Lead at OCAD University / OCAD U CO (2019)
Designed and facilitated employee engagement workshops supporting institutional culture and organizational development.
Research and Engagement Project Support at University of Guelph / Dr. Peter Jones (2019)
Supported a structured dialogic design session focused on systemic problem framing and collective sense-making.
Master of Design, Strategic Foresight and Education, 2017 OCAD University
