Policy. Strategy. Systems.

STILL

The hardest problems don’t lack solutions. They lack the conditions for solutions to hold.

STILL is a strategic consultancy working where policy meets people — and where the distance between them becomes the work.

Scroll
Philosophy

Most institutions already know what needs to change. What they’re missing is a way to hear it clearly, name it honestly, and act on it without losing the trust of the people the change is for.

STILL works in that gap. We bring rigour to listening. We translate community experience into evidence that decision-makers can act on. And we design for the moment after we leave — when the institution has to sustain what was built without us in the room.

We are named for what endures.

Olivia Nuamah — Founder

Selected Work10
01

PwC Canada · 2021–2025 · Professional Services

National Inclusion Transformation

Large institutions rarely lack ambition on inclusion. What they lack is the infrastructure to hear what is actually happening inside them — and the governance to act on it without losing the people the change is for.

25%
Attrition Reduction
4
Public Strategies Launched
View Project →
02

Pride Toronto · 2017–2020 · Institutional Recovery

Restoring Institutional Legitimacy

An institution that couldn’t account for who it was accountable to couldn’t sustain either operational recovery or community legitimacy. The work required holding both at once.

2×
Revenue Growth to ~$9M
YoY
Attendance Growth
View Project →
03

Innercity Family Health Team · 2014–2017 · Housing & Health

Making the Invisible Visible

The people cycling through Toronto’s emergency shelter system were invisible to the systems designed to respond to them — because no one had documented, at scale, who they were and what they actually needed.

1st
Comprehensive Shelter Census
Multi
Level Government Alignment
View Project →
04

Atkinson Foundation · 2009–2012 · Policy & Philanthropy

Evidence That Shapes Legislation

Good policy depends on whose experience informs it. Institutions can only act on what they can see — and making the right things visible is itself a form of policy work.

$3.6B
Policy Influenced
Law
Provincial Anti-Racism Legislation
View Project →
05

UK Civil Service · 1996–2009 · Legislation & Reform

Embedding Equality Into Law

The question after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was not whether to change — but whether the change would be real. The work focused on the difference between compliance and structural reform.

4
Government Departments
2010
Equality Act Contribution
View Project →
06

Innercity Family Health Team · 2014–2017 · Youth Housing

Friends of Ruby

The evidence began with a question nobody had answered at scale: what is actually happening to 2SLGBTQ+ young people who become homeless in Toronto, and what do they need that the system isn’t providing?

1st
Census of its Kind in Canada
Perm.
Shelter Organization Created
View Project →
07

Innercity Family Health Team · 2014–2017 · Transitional Housing

Huntley Street Transitional Housing

Transitional housing, when it works, is not a service. It is a designed pathway across systems that were not built to coordinate with each other.

Multi
Agency Partnership Model
City
& Province Funded
View Project →
08

Innercity Family Health Team · 2014–2017 · Systems Change

10 Year Strategy to End Homelessness

A ten-year strategy to end homelessness is a claim about what you know. The question is whether that claim is grounded in the experience of the people the strategy is actually about.

10yr
Government Strategy Informed
3
Levels of Government Aligned
View Project →
09

Atkinson Foundation · 2009–2012 · Research & Policy

The Black Experience Project

The lived experiences of Black people in the Greater Toronto Area constituted evidence — not testimony to be acknowledged and set aside, but data rigorous enough to move institutions across multiple systems simultaneously.

Law
Provincial Anti-Racism Legislation
City
Anti-Black Racism Strategy
View Project →
10

ACTRA · 2020–2021 · Industry Standards & Equity

Black Hair & Makeup Campaign

Lived experience, when organized and translated into the language institutions are required to respond to, changes what institutions are required to do.

Natl.
Enforceable Industry Standards
Policy
Lived Experience into Law
View Project →

Where We Work

Practice

01
Institutional Equity & IDEA Strategy

Equity work fails when it sits outside the institution’s core systems. We design inclusion strategy that is embedded in how decisions are made, how people are evaluated, and how resources flow — not added alongside those things.

02
Governance & Leadership Advisory

Institutions under pressure often lose the capacity to hear what’s actually happening inside them. We work with boards and senior leaders to restore that capacity — and to translate what they hear into decisions that hold.

03
Talent Systems & Performance

Who gets seen, who gets developed, and who gets left behind is rarely accidental. We examine the systems that shape those outcomes and redesign them around what actually drives performance — not proxies for it.

04
Public Safety & Community Trust

The distance between institutional authority and community trust is rarely about intentions. It’s about whose experience gets counted as evidence. We work at that gap — building processes that make community voice legible to decision-makers.

05
Accessibility & Human Rights Compliance

Compliance frameworks tell institutions what they must do. They rarely help institutions understand why it matters or how to embed it. We work across both — from legislative requirements to the organisational culture that makes accessibility real.

06
Policy Design & Evidence Frameworks

Good policy depends on whose experience informs it. We design evidence frameworks that centre the populations most affected — and build the analytical infrastructure to make that evidence credible to those with the authority to act on it.

Olivia Nuamah

Olivia Nuamah — Founder, STILL

Founder

Olivia
Nuamah

Olivia Nuamah has spent twenty-five years working at the place where policy meets people — in the UK Civil Service, in Canada’s public and nonprofit sectors, and inside institutions navigating the distance between what they say and what communities experience.

STILL is built on what that work taught her: that sustainable change requires narrative, values, and lived experience to move in the same direction.

Career

2021–25National Managing Director, DEIB — PwC Canada
2017–20Executive Director — Pride Toronto
2014–17Executive Director — Innercity Family Health Team
2009–12Senior Leader — Atkinson Foundation
1996–09Senior Policy Advisor — UK Civil Service
EducationBA Social Anthropology, University of Toronto · MSc Children & Childhood Development · Doctoral Research, University of Warwick

How We Work

Approach

We don’t impose templates or perform transformation. We do the deeper work: listening with discipline, translating insight into evidence, and designing for the moment after we leave.

01
Listen with Rigour

Establish formal insight-gathering processes that convert employee and community experience into decision-ready evidence — structured, credible, and actionable.

02
Translate to Governance

Convert insight into metrics, policy options, and decision frameworks that leaders can act on within their existing structures. The analysis has to be usable, not just accurate.

03
Embed into Systems

Integrate change into performance criteria, advancement, and leadership accountability — so it becomes structural rather than ceremonial, and survives the people who commissioned it.

04
Design for After

Build internal capability, transparent reporting, and leadership tools so the institution can sustain the work independently. We design for the moment after we leave the room.

Let’s
Talk.

STILL works with institutions, governments, and organisations navigating complex, high-stakes change. If the distance between what your institution says and what people experience has become the problem — that’s where we start.

Emailolivia@itsstill.com
LocationToronto, Canada
LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/olivianuamah
Websiteitsstill.com