You don’t find a career, you build it: Keka DasGupta becomes Chair of CERIC Board

CERIC is pleased to announce Keka DasGupta as the new Chair of its Board of Directors for a two-year term. DasGupta, founder of the Art of Life-ing and Chief Marketing Advisor at Challenge Factory, will lead the Board as CERIC delivers on its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan. 

DasGupta has volunteered with CERIC since 2017, most recently as Vice-chair, where she advocated for national workforce strategies and helped shape the launch of CERIC’s Career Myth Buster quiz. She takes on the role as employers, educators and governments pay closer attention to careers, AI and the future of work. 

These are the focus areas in CERIC’s new strategic plan. It commits CERIC to equipping people across Canada for the future of work, with an early focus on youth and marginalized populations. It also calls for career development to be recognized as essential workforce infrastructure at policy tables and for Canada’s standing as a thought leader to grow. The Board steers that work through to 2030. 

Over more than two decades, DasGupta has led PR and marketing at IKEA, served as Vice President of PR at DDB Canada and founded her own boutique firm. She has helped global brands like Nike, Disney and American Express connect purpose to performance. At Challenge Factory, she shapes brand strategy and thought leadership on the changing world of work. A global keynote and TEDx speaker, DasGupta has received more than 50 marketing awards, with work featured by TED.com, Harvard Business School, Fast Company, Breakfast Television and The Globe and Mail. 

Keka’s own path makes the case. In high school, she sang backup on a Raffi album. She has worked as a daycare worker and a vacation sales representative. Today, she’s also Santa’s official speechwriter and co-PR director of Toronto’s Original Santa Claus Parade. “You don’t find a career; you build it,” she says, “and no experience is ever wasted.” Each step in Keka’s eclectic CV built her career – but the connections only became clear in hindsight. Paths like hers are becoming the norm for Canadians. Yet, without a map to an end destination, the hard part of navigating a career is knowing where to step next. That’s what career development professionals help with, and why this field matters so much.

“Keka has spent nearly a decade helping CERIC expand how career development is understood beyond our own field,” said Kay Castelle, Executive Director of CERIC. “She has a rare ability to take complex ideas and make them relevant to the conversations happening in workplaces, communities and around policy tables. As CERIC enters its next chapter, that perspective will be enormously valuable as we work to make career development impossible to overlook.“

CERIC’s full 2026/2027 Board of Directors, drawn from across Canada, includes: 

• Keka DasGupta – Precision Marketing Group Inc., Toronto, ON (Chair) 

• Akosua Alagaratnam – First Work, Toronto, ON (Vice-chair) 

• Meghan Lavallee – Apprenticeship Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB (Past Chair) 

• Tony Botelho – The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Secretary/Treasurer) 

• Shereen Ashman – Saccae Studio Inc., Bowmanville, ON 

• Michael Ford – Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC 

• Dinuka Gunaratne – Northeastern University, Vancouver, BC 

• Candy Ho – Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, BC 

• Holly Linkert – Eastwood Collegiate Institute, Waterloo Region District School Board, Kitchener, ON 

• Magdalena Mot – Capilano University, North Vancouver, BC 

• Valérie Roy – AXTRA, Montreal, QC 

• Donald G. Lawson – The Counselling Foundation of Canada, Toronto, ON (Honorary Director – Ex-officio) 

• Riz Ibrahim – The Counselling Foundation of Canada, Toronto, ON (Executive Officer – Ex-officio) 

Members of CERIC’s three Advisory Committees – Practical & Academic Research; Content & Learning; and Advocacy & Community Engagement – have also been appointed for the coming year. These committees will help turn the plan’s priorities into projects, programs and publications. 

CERIC is a charitable organization that advances education, research and advocacy in career counselling and development. We envision a Canada where every individual can confidently navigate their career journey with purpose, possibility and support, and our mission is to champion and advance career development through learning, research and advocacy to improve the economic and social well-being of people in Canada.  

We fund projects to develop innovative resources that build the knowledge and skills of diverse career and employment professionals. CERIC also annually hosts Cannexus, Canada’s largest bilingual career development conference, publishes the country’s only peer-reviewed journal, Canadian Journal of Career Development, and runs the CareerWise / OrientAction websites, providing the top career development news and views.