Greg Frankson
Greg Frankson, OCT, B.Ed. is a Toronto-based writer, educator, and community activist. As Founder & Lead Consultant for Voice Share Inc., he helps his clients with inclusive leadership through customized coaching, mentorship and training programs and delivers creative services at public events as a poet-in-residence, emcee, performance artist, and professional speaker. He worked in the public, private and nonprofit sectors as a diversity,
anti-discrimination and anti-racism facilitator and training consultant for over two decades and visited schools from coast to coast as a literary arts educator. Greg serves clients in the nonprofit, labour, postsecondary education, financial services, real estate, legal, marketing, and technology sectors. He has also served as an in-house diversity, equity, and inclusion advisor in public and nonprofit organizations at the regional and national level.
Greg has been presenting, emceeing, and speaking at mental health, DEI, and health equity events since the late 1990s. He has participated at gatherings in North America and internationally penning poetic reflections on the current state of Canadian healthcare and global mental health systems. He served as Poet Laureate for the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership and worked on projects with Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Services, Schizophrenia Society of Ontario, Mental Health Commission of Canada, and the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health (USA), among others.
Greg has published four poetry collections, released four studio audio recordings, edited and contributed to the acclaimed 2022 collection AfriCANthology: Perspective of Black Canadian Poets, and appeared in five other anthologies. His full-length creative nonfiction debut, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters, was published by Dundurn Press in January 2025. Greg’s op-eds, poems, and articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Write Magazine, and Rabble, among other publications, and he was the resident poet on CBC Radio One’s Here and Now Toronto.
In addition to his artistic achievements, Greg was the first Black Canadian to serve as president of Canada’s oldest undergraduate student government at Queen’s University in 1996-97. He led a successful student advocacy effort for Queen’s to commemorate Robert Sutherland, Canada’s first Black university graduate, Queen’s first major benefactor, and the first Black lawyer in British North America. In 2009, the University rededicated its Policy Studies Building as Robert Sutherland Hall.
Greg has earned numerous awards and accolades over the past two decades, including the 2025 Ajax Arts & Culture Community Award, the ByBlacks.com People’s Choice Award for Best Author and a Canada Book Award in 2021, a 2014 Black Canadian Award nomination for Spoken Word, induction to the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour in 2013, a 2012 Canadian national poetry slam championship, and a 2005 Honoured Man of the Village Award from the Every Child is Sacred initiative.
Greg’s current community engagement includes his work as artistic director of the Canadian Black Literary Festival/BlackLit Durham since 2022 and membership on the Canada SCORES board of directors. Past service includes chairing Abilities Centre IDEA Advisory Council and serving on Queen’s University Council, plus membership on the Whitby Fire Chief’s Public Advisory Council and the boards of The King’s Trust Canada, Voice for Mental Health Collective, Durham Improv, Spoken Word Canada, Ottawa Community Immigration Services Organization, and Tropicana Community Services.
He is honoured to be a nominee for the Cultural Expressions for CHANGE 2026 Madiba Award.