We build with communities, and partner with communities who build for themselves

Strategies for communities, real estate development, and organizations committed to shared prosperity.

Adinkra Strategies
is a collective of technical experts guided by the power of imagination and our vision to build communities from love

Adinkra Strategies is a
collective of technical experts

guided by the power of
imagination and our vision

to build communities from love.

ABOUT ADINKRA

Adinkra Strategies was established to evolve the economies of real estate development into one that is held accountable to the social, political, cultural and ecological relationships that support our collective well-being.

Our technical expertise in management consulting, real estate development, community-led land use planning, risk management, organizational development, affordable housing and strategic homeless response is anchored by the urgent need to take better care of each other and our planet.

We help you get curious about how your values are show up in your performance metrics and in community. Whether you’re an informal collective, in startup mode, preparing for growth, or making a strategic leap, we enable wayfinding around obstacles towards the horizon line of your vision.

By honouring the gifts passed down by our ancestors, and healing our collective traumas, we work in ways that uphold the values of mutual benefit, connection, shared humanity, and innovation.

Together, our shared values are the foundation upon which we will build, ensuring that current and future generations can thrive

Everyone deserves a loving home nested within communities of shared prosperity and ecological sustainability.

THE PROCESS

What if the ways we plan and develop organizations, housing, and cities were led by the ideals of our shared humanity?

At Adinkra Strategies, we don’t do things the normal way, because we already know the normal way is not leading to better outcomes. That’s why we’ve developed the PAUSE DREAM PLAN MOVE process, in which we harness proven fundamentals while correcting for errors of the past, letting go of what isn’t working and building the world we dream of.

PAUSE

UUsing project management fundamentals jazzed up with our unique flavours, our iterative process starts with a PAUSE to enable relationship building, historical review, environmental scan, and development of project analytics. It's the power of a collective "taking a beat."

DREAM

Next, we DREAM. Though a customized strategic visioning process we do a deep dive on your purpose as a group, affirm goals, and imagine what it will look like for you to realize your desired impacts. We want to hear about the bold, audacious reasons your group exists.

PLAN

Following this, we draft a PLAN of action respecting the financial, environmental, social, cultural, regulatory, legal, time, and human capacities required to advance your dream. In this phase we rely on the broad-spectrum data collected previously, document and refine analysis, assess risks, and structure recommended priorities with a map of how to move forward.

MOVE

Finally, we MOVE. In this phase, groups are set up to formally adopt and execute their Plan, advance towards near and long-term goals. Depending on what emerges from your Plan, Adinkra Strategies may be well aligned collaborator if your goals include real estate development, affordable housing, or community-led collaboratives. We are reminded of the African proverb: if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.

PAST CLIENTS & COLLABORATORS

PAST CLIENTS & COLLABORATORS

OUR Services

Organizations and communities that are driven by bold visions of a better world rely on new ways of working. Our magic comes from how we do what we do, working from the strength of mutually beneficial relationships, a mastery of business and real estate fundamentals, and an advanced analysis of systems and structures.

Instead of empty catchphrases, our values are visible in how we work and what we build. We perform as if the future of our human family and planetary home depends on our success because it does. And we choose to work with communities and organizations—small or large—that feel the same.

Housing & Land Use

• Affordable housing
• Community land trusts
• Social purpose investing
• Homeless-to-housed policy-making
• Resident-led planning
• Mixed-use real estate development.
Strategy & Planning

• Values-evident performance planning
• Organizational development
• Enterprise risk management
• Fractional and interim executive leadership
• Management consulting.
Policy & Research

• Housing
• Economic development
• Poverty reduction
• Anti-oppression & liberation pedagogy
• Qualitative methods.

In Collaboration

Adinkra Strategies works in a consulting co-operative structure together with values-aligned organizations. Remember Voltron? Well just like them, we link up when duty calls, combining our respective strengths in ways that allow for greater creativity, capacity and impact for the benefit of our projects, clients, community, and environment.

PARTNER WITH ADINKRA

BEHIND THE NAME

Rooted with our ancestors, grounded in the present, dreaming of the stars.

Adinkras are visual symbols that represent concepts, proverbs, and philosophies in West African culture, offering a concise way to convey deep meanings in visual form (similar to the Yin & Yang symbol from Taoist culture).

Adinkras are used by Black-led organizations and people of African descent to honour our ancestors’ wisdom. Like the Sankofa adinkra, we look back to look ahead. By lifting up & honouring the lessons taught by those in our ancestry, we ground ourselves in love, community, and hope, reminded that anything is possible.

Community care is what allowed our ancestors to survive, and it will give us what we need to push beyond the harmful limits of the status quo in our present time.

We selected Odo Nnyew Fie Kwan as the symbol for our company, which means “Love does not lose its way home. Those led by love always end up in the right place.” This Adinkra points to the inseparability between home and love—in our dwellings, communities, and bodies. It reminds us that no matter how far we may have strayed, we can always find our way again when we put love in the centre.

MEET OUR FOUNDER

Stephanie Allen is the driving force behind Adinkra Strategies.

She is a real estate futurist who has worked in the real estate development sector since 2002, quickly ascending in the private sector to partnership and senior leadership roles, and working in executive roles in the non-profit and government housing sectors.

She is a nationally recognized expert on how systems & structures shape urban development and her experience spans the housing continuum from leading market developments, to supporting homeless people living in encampments.

Stephanie grew up in public housing and holds a bachelor’s in business administration and a master’s in urban studies which was internationally recognized in 2020 by the Western Association of Graduate Schools (WAGS) & Pro-Quest with their Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award in Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business Disciplines.

Drawing also on her lived experiences of growing up in social housing, Stephanie’s understanding of how home shapes a person’s sense of self informs her work in the housing system. Named after her grandmother who taught her the value of sharing and generosity, Adinkra Strategies approachs collaborations and community-building rooted in these fundamentals.

She is a co-founder and past Land Trust Director of Hogan’s Alley Society, past Director of the Federation of Black Canadians, and has served on the City of Vancouver’s Development Permit Advisory Committee.

In 2021 Stephanie was awarded the BC Multiculturalism and Anti-Racism Awards, in the Breaking Barriers category and she has been recognized on Vancouver Magazine's Power50 list from 2018 to ‘21. In 2023 she represented Canadian civil society at the United Nations 2nd Permanent Forum for People of African Descent.