We’re New Room.
Hi! We’re DJ & Erin. Co-founders of New Room.
We want to reimagine the ways we work, live, & relate. With a combined 25+ years of organizational development & conscious culture-building to purpose-driven organizations and community leaders.
Our work combines Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism/Access, and Social Impact (IDEAS) practices with innovation and strategy frameworks. We design programs and experiences that enable individual, team and organizational transformation. We are passionate about creating environments where folks can learn how to adapt to today’s challenges and creatively collaborate on finding mission-driven solutions that serve the greater good.
With values at the heart of it all.
Decentralizing power
From decentralizing power to empowering and supporting equity-deserving people, New Room opens the door to real social change through anti-oppressive values and education.
Collective Action
Each of us plays a role in collective change. We believe in the collective power of individual action. We know that progress is only possible when we learn from one another in community, collaboration, and connection.
Space for Creation
The culture of urgency that drives so many businesses steals our capacity to care, ideate and learn. We intentionally design room into our work to give us, our collaborators and clients space to really listen and uncover stronger ideas while we co-create.
Accessibility
Knowledge is power. We believe too much valuable informational is hidden behind dated procedures and institutional barriers. People need to be informed so they can act with agency. We shape our programming and interventions to ensure knowledge is shared so decisions can be collaborative.
The New Room Method
How we cultivate spaces of transformation.
Whether we are designing experiences, facilitating deep conversations, building our programming or leading strategic engagements, we are grounded in the knowing that change ripples from the self to the community to the systemic. This ripple of change inspires The New Room Method and shapes our three commitments: Become, Belong, Believe.
Find out all about it by viewing the complete New Room Method document.
New Room was co-founded in 2021 by Danièle-Jocelyne Otou and Erin Willett. Dani-Jo, working in social innovation and facilitating in EDI, was looking to collaborate with someone in culture development to ensure her work impacted people on a structural and institutional level. Erin was working in leadership development and culture strategy, looking to collaborate with someone who deeply understood the imperative of embedding practices of equity and belonging into strategic initiatives. Joining forces was a natural fit. We were long-time friends who would often meet-up to deep-dive about theories of change. We cared deeply about our work and both desired to partner up with someone who could match our intentionality and passion for social change.
Meet the founders
Organizational Development & IDEAS
Daniele-Jocelyne is a dedicated social impact leader with a profound commitment to community engagement and strategic innovation. With a Bachelor's degree in Human Relations and Organization Development from Concordia University, she’s honed her expertise in meaningful community engagement and strategic cross-sectorial initiatives.
Daniele-Jocelyne further specialized in Social Innovation Design at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2021, she co-founded New Room, where she leads the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, & Social Impact (IDEAS) Systems’ Intervention arm, driving social and organizational transformation.
Her commitment to social justice extends beyond her professional endeavors. Daniele-Jocelyne is the Executive Director of the Black Healing Center in Montreal, which provides free, afro-positive mental health care to Black communities.
Additionally, she serves on the Steering Committee of Concordia University’s Centre for Social Transformation, SHIFT, supporting social change initiatives across the island of TioTia: Ké (Montreal).
Learning & Program Design
Erin Willett is an Experience Designer, Change Strategist and Artist based in Montreal, Canada.
Erin's creative practice was rooted during her upbringing in the Subarctic, where she was immersed in the cultures of the Naskapi and Innu Peoples. These early experiences with the land and its People sparked a deep interest in identity, culture, and belonging, themes that remain central to her work today.
An entrepreneur since 2010, Erin has led strategy and creative exploration to clients ranging from start-ups to established non-profits and corporations. Her guidance has spanned creative direction, learning experience design, leadership development and conscious culture-building.
This work led her to co-found New Room in 2021. Within New Room, Erin leads Program Development. She uses storytelling and systems-thinking to create emotionally-rich experiences that explore how New Room’s clients and community relate to themselves, each other, the spaces they inhabit and the systems they are a part of.
In 2022, Erin launched Rage Flowers. Under this moniker, Erin draws, writes and facilitates art-based workshops that explore change and becoming. Erin’s transformative workshops and experiences support people in connecting with their subconscious, deepening their relationship with themselves and accessing their courage in the face of life’s inevitable chapters of change, grief and growth.