In Episode 51 Ellected’s host Sarah Elder-Chamanara sat down for an in-person conversation with Sabrina Grover, fresh off her win as Mark Sutcliffe’s campaign manager in the hotly contested Ottawa mayoral elections.
Sabrina and Sarah talk about the Ottawa campaign, including what you need to do to win outside of party politics, how talking with people you don’t agree with can be a good thing, why elections aren’t won on Twitter, the long overdue participation of women in colour in lead campaign roles and so much more.
More about Sabrina Grover:
Sabrina is an experienced advocacy, policy and communications professional who has worked extensively with civil society and youth.
Sabrina previously worked in Government Relations with the Calgary Real Estate Board and then the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), focusing on government affairs and legislation related to housing at all levels of government.Sabrina’s work focused on developing policies that protect and support home owners, and effectively considered land-use, and created an enabling environment along the housing continuum.
Sabrina has also worked extensively in provincial politics in Alberta prior to the dissolution of the PC Party of Alberta, where she focused on campaigns, youth engagement, and media relations. Sabrina’s media experience has been primarily focused on political engagement. Sabrina served as the communications and media lead as part of her role on the Board of Directors for a provincial political party in Alberta between 2015 and 2017, including leading on media engagement for the party leadership convention. Sabrina also served as the media and communications lead as a part of a local campaign in Calgary in the 2017 municipal elections.
Sabrina participated in electoral missions in Zimbabwe in 2018 and in Sri Lanka in 2019 as part of the Commonwealth Observer Group. Sabrina’s work included meeting with members of civil society organisations, women’s groups, youth groups, and political representatives. Sabrina contributed extensively to the Electoral Observation Mission reports and lead authorship on the sections on participation and inclusion. These included detailing the barriers to electoral participation for women and youth, as well as making recommendations to the government on changes to make participation more inclusive, socially cohesive and accessible.
Sabrina has also served as the co-chair of the Youth 7 (Y7) summit, which serves as the formal side engagement to the G7 as part of Canada's 2018 G7 presidency. Sabrina spent over 10 years working in developing programs for youth academic conferences focused on the United Nations in Calgary, Seattle, Portland and New York.
More about Sarah Elder-Chamanara:
Sarah Elder-Chamanara is the founder, creative director, designer and owner of Madame Premier, a feminist, political and activist clothing company and community based in Calgary, Alberta. With the underlying principle of seeing more women and diversity in politics, elected and in backrooms, at every level, Sarah and Madame Premier create opportunities for conversations about how politics works, why it needs to change, who it needs to change for and how the time for that is now.