Zainub Verjee Appointed to the Board of the Cultural Human Resources Council

At its recently held 25th Annual General Meeting in Toronto, Zainub Verjee was appointed to the Board Directors of the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC).

In Canada, the Cultural Human Resources Council brings together cultural workers and employers to address training, career development and other human resource issues.

The Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC) strives to be at the centre of vision and forward thinking in the area of cultural human resources development. CHRC brings together representatives of arts disciplines and cultural industries in the cultural sector to address the training and career development needs of employers and cultural workers including artists, technical staff, managers and all others engaged professionally in the sector.

Zainub says “building next generation leadership is an important and strategic priority in the Culture Sector.”

The cultural sector comprises literally hundreds of occupations in eight broad sub-sectors: live performing arts, writing and publishing, visuals arts and crafts, film and television, broadcasting, digital media, music and sound recording, and heritage. The sector includes employers and workers in several thousand organizations, big and small, not-for-profit and for-profit.

“Cultural workers contribute an estimated $48 billion to the economy. Further, the number of people working in cultural fields has grown at more than twice the rate of the total workforce over the past 20 years.”

Created in 1995 to strengthen the Canadian cultural workforce, CHRC is one of over 30 sector councils formerly supported by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). CHRC’s membership spans the country, and its members are as diverse as the disciplines and industries they work in.

The Canadian cultural community is large, dynamic, highly skilled and well educated. According to the Culture Statistics Program of Statistics Canada, more than 600,000 Canadians work in the cultural labour force.

Zainub continues to be the member of the Steering Committee that advises CHRC on the Talent to Lead T2L program including linking mentors and mentees. It is comprised of cultural leaders from across the sector and the country. is designed for mid-career cultural leaders seeking to take their careers to the next level of leadership. It creates opportunities to learn from one another and build relationships with other leaders, while also getting support from top-notch executives in the field.

T2L focuses on selecting 20 leaders from Indigenous, racialized communities and official language minority communities that are currently working in a variety of cultural organizations and practices across Canada.

Zainub is currently the Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries.