Saadia Muzaffar

Background

Saadia Muzaffar was born in Karachi, Pakistan, the oldest of four children. They developed an interest in machinery and numbers from an early age that was encouraged by their engineer father. “He raised us girls in a very gender-neutral way,” Muzaffar observed in an article for Chatelaine. “He would say ‘they can do anything that a boy can do,’ and he meant it.” Muzaffar also noted that one of his best pieces of advice was “master choosing to do what scares you.”

Despite this encouragement, societal stereotypes about women and science influenced Muzaffar’s decision to study business administration (marketing) at Sheridan College after migrating to Canada when they were 19. She later earned a degree in communications and journalism from York University. After working in the financial sector for three years following graduation, they entered the tech world via the Toronto-based Research Innovation Commercialization Centre, where they rarely encountered female employees among their tech start-up clients.

“I was aware that there would be new opportunities,” they told Chatelaine in 2015. “I was also a little naive, in hindsight, in thinking that if a place says that women and men are equal, that they mean it. What I’ve learned is that it means different things in different places and we have our work cut out here [in] as well. In a lot of places, I fit a lot more easily, where my mobility wasn’t restricted by the fact that I was a young woman; but here, the colour of my skin set me apart. I was often the only woman, and the only person of colour in boardrooms. That’s hard. Sometimes you feel lonely.”

Muzaffar also worked as the senior director of marketing at AudienceView, a software firm.

Advocacy

Asked in 2017 how their view of feminism had changed over time, Saadia Muzaffar noted that at the beginning of their career, “my view of justice was very tied to what I embody as an identity—my feminism felt the inequities of being not only a woman, but a queer immigrant woman of colour. As I learned more and dove deeper, my advocacy signal-boosted experiences that I don’t share—trans and non-binary identities, challenges of anti-Blackness, poverty, physical disabilities, and mental illness. My feminism has become a lot more intersectional.” (See also Intersectionality.)

Muzaffar believed that while Canada did well in attracting skilled STEM workers, firms often saw immigrants, especially women, as little more than cheap labour. Muzaffar’s work in the tech field exposed them to racist jokes and constant reminders that people like themself faced numerous barriers and hostile, non-inclusive environments in the startup sector.

In 2011, Muzaffaar founded TechGirls Canada (TGC), a non-profit organization which promotes the advancement of women who have been marginalized in the STEM sector, focusing on immigrant, racialized, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQ+, and refugee communities. (See also Immigration to Canada; 2SLGBTQ+ Rights in Canada.) “TechGirls Canada was borne out of pure frustration of being not only a woman in tech, but also being a woman of colour and finding that there was not nearly enough recognition of this lack of diversity,” they observed in 2017 for TVO Today. TGC’s efforts have included research into women in STEM, collaborations with artists and communities, career advancement programs and promoting success stories.

“When you’re a young girl, you’re not looking to pick fights with the world,” Saadia Muzaffar observed in 2015 article for Chatelaine. “But take chances—become a different person than who you’re told to be.”

Muzaffar was also a co-founder of Tech Reset Canada, which advocates for tech innovation that prioritizes the public good, increasing transparency in public digital infrastructure and data use, and for investment in increasing tech capacity and expertise within the public sector. “The distance and power balance between those who develop and commercialize the technology coming to market, and our collective public capacity to manage, needs attention,” Tech Reset Canada’s website notes.

Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs

Saadia Muzaffar was a member of Waterfront Toronto’s Digital Strategy Advisory Panel, which consulted on data privacy and other concerns surrounding the use of technology in the development of a proposed “smart city” in Toronto’s Port Lands. The proposed project was a collaboration between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, a company owned by Google’s parent Alphabet Inc.. Members of the panel were recruited from various fields with an interest in tech, including academics, tech executives, and urbanists.

Muzaffar grew increasingly concerned about how concerns surrounding the collection and use of data were waved away or ignored, and that the project would only financially benefit Sidewalk Labs instead of local innovators or the general public.

On 4 October 2018, Muzaffar submitted their resignation letter. In their resignation letter, Muzaffar criticized Waterfront Toronto for its “apathy and utter lack of leadership regarding shaky public trust and social license” through its habit of disregarding questions and concerns about data and digital infrastructure, including reports that Sidewalk Labs wanted to claim any intellectual property from local consultants working on the project. They believed there was enough evidence to show that a tech-company led, surveillance-based city should not be built, as it would disenfranchise residents, take money away from public budgets, and commit public funding to the maintenance of unnecessary technology.

Muzaffar concluded that “there is no version of being a good steward for the people of Toronto, where Waterfront Toronto does not ensure that both the data and the digital infrastructure in all its developments is controlled by our public institutions.”

Within months of their resignation, which was one of several from the panel during the second half of 2018, Muzaffar participated in the #BlockSidewalk campaign. The project, later known as Quayside, was cancelled in May 2020.

Writing

Saadia Muzaffar has published several short stories, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. They also contributed an essay on gender diversity in STEM to the 2019 anthology Some Thoughts.

Honours

Saadia Muzaffar was profiled in Paulina Cameron’s 2017 book Canada 150 Women and in Museum of Toronto’s exhibit The 52: Stories of Women Who Transformed Toronto. In 2023, they served as a Canadian delegate to the United Nations’ 67^th Commission on the Status of Women. They received the Woman of the Year Award for Leadership Excellence in 2024 from Women in Communications and Technology.