Consultation Services

Our consultation services are not meant to act as or replace anti-racism and anti-oppression training. There are many skilled and talented BIPOC doing that work and have been doing so for decades. We at BIPOC of Publishing in Canada owe these educators much of our own knowledge in the field. We highly encourage any organization or individual seeking anti-racism and anti-oppression training to seek them out, especially the many Black women in Canada doing this important work. 

Instead, our consultation services are meant to specifically address projects and initiatives tackling the issues faced by BIPOC in the Canadian publishing industry’s workforce (assistants, agents, editors, marketing and publicity professionals, rights people, operations staff, etc). Through our own individual experiences and our work/conversations with various BIPOC in Canadian publishing (and beyond), we hope that our consultation services will provide valuable insight to those individuals and organizations seeking to develop programs tackling the industry’s equity and inclusion problems. 

We intend to be extremely selective in the kinds of projects and discussions we take on as consultants. Whether an individual or an organization, when requesting our services as consultants, we ask you to consider the following:

  • Do you have a specific project or issue you would like to discuss with us that goes beyond acknowledging/lamenting that systemic racism is bad? We want these consultations to lead to meaningful change, whether for individuals as allies or for organizations working to be a welcoming space for BIPOC; simply rehashing the issues without bringing potential solutions to the table does not help with that goal.

  • Are you prepared to come into the conversation with actionable plans?

  • Are you willing to listen if we advise against your plans or recommend major overhauls? Note: this does not mean that we expect you to follow our recommendations exactly but we expect that you will at least thoughtfully consider our differing opinions and suggestions without reacting defensively and poorly.

  • Even if our recommendations and advice are implemented at the end of the project or conversation, our consultation will not count as an endorsement from BIPOC of Publishing in Canada and we expect that you will not claim or advertise our involvement as such. 

If you believe your project could benefit from our consultation, BIPOC of Publishing in Canada can work with you in one of two ways:

  1. Hourly: for projects that can be discussed in a phone or video call that does not require extensive preparation and work from us beforehand (generally, only one or two of us will be available for these calls).

  1. On-going Project or review: consultation that will involve more work, such as reviewing and making notes on an action plan or working closely with a group or organisation in the development of a project or plan, will be considered on a case by case basis.

Please contact us using our form with a brief introduction and overview of what you would like our consultation services for, as well as which of the above options you are seeking. If Option 1, please indicate how many hours you anticipate you will need and if you have a preference for who you would like to speak with (BIPOC of Publishing in Canada does not guarantee that person will be available but we will take your preference into consideration) in the body of your submission.

BIPOC of Publishing in Canada reserves the right to decline proposed projects for any reason we deem appropriate. We also reserve the right to withdraw from an on-going project at any point in time during the consultation period; should this occur, we will discuss and provide refunds.

All fees charged for consultation will be directed towards our programming.