Applying complexity science to real world problems

Dr. Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed Appointed Director of the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) 

The Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) is pleased to announce that Dr. Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed has been appointed as its new Director. 

Founded by Dr. Frances Westley, WISIR has long been a global leader in advancing research, teaching, and practice on social innovation and systems change. The Institute has served as a hub for scholars and practitioners committed to addressing complex societal challenges through collaboration, experimentation, and resilience-building. 

In assuming this new role, Dr. Ahmed expressed deep gratitude to those who have guided WISIR’s evolution over the years. 

“I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Frances Westley, whose vision and scholarship gave life to WISIR and deeply influenced the field of social innovation around the world,” she shared. “I also want to honor the thoughtful leadership of Dr. Dan McCarthy and Dr. Sean Geobey, whose stewardship has carried forward WISIR’s legacy of rigor, compassion, and collaboration. It’s an honor to continue building on their work with our remarkable community.” 

As Assistant Professor (Teaching Stream) of Business at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Ahmed brings a unique blend of scholarship, practice, and relational leadership to the Institute. A social innovation scholar-practitioner, her work foregrounds decolonial and relational approaches to social entrepreneurship, finance, systems change, and knowledge co-creation. Her research and pedagogy center “dialogues of wisdoms” and plural ways of knowing, doing, and being to reimagine social innovation as a path toward more equitable, regenerative futures. 

Dr. Ahmed is also a co-steward of the Transition Bridges Project (TBP), a collaborative initiative pioneering systems mediation to address the polycrisis. TBP's practice involves acting as intermediaries across actors, scales, and systems to facilitate dialogue, mutual understanding, conflict transformation, and collective action toward resilient, regenerative communities. 

She completed her PhD in Sustainability Management at the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment, where she was named Valedictorian. She also holds an LL.M. in International Law from the University of California, Berkeley, and B.A./LL.B. degrees from LUMS University in Pakistan. 

As a former co-founder of the Social Innovation Lab and Daftarkhwan, Pakistan’s largest co-working network, Dr. Ahmed has long bridged academic inquiry with lived practice through community-engaged learning, critical pedagogy, and systems-mediation experimentation. 

“WISIR has always been more than an institute,” she notes. “It’s a living community of practice - an ecosystem of people who believe in reimagining systems more in tuned with justice, equity, and regeneration. I look forward to continuing this journey together.” When asked about WISIR’s future directions, Dr. Ahmed is excited to promote radical interdisciplinarity and more inter-systemic approaches to research and practice, while centering pluriversal ways of knowing, doing and being rooted in wisdoms from around the world.