Karim Bardeesy

Karim is a public service leader who has worked for a better democracy, a more educated and engaged population, and better public policy throughout his professional career. In 2017, he co-founded the Leadership Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, and helps lead and set the agenda of the leadership and policy thinktank. Karim also teaches SSH505, “Making the Future,” for which he has won two teaching awards from TMU’s Faculty of Arts.

In 2023, Karim became Executive Director at the Brookfield Institute, while continuing his duties as Executive Director of the Leadership Lab and leading the newly integrated institute at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Karim was previously Deputy Principal Secretary for the Premier of Ontario, the Honourable Kathleen Wynne, and served as Executive Director of Policy for Premiers Wynne and Dalton McGuinty. He was a candidate in Parkdale—High Park in the 2022 Ontario provincial election.

He has worked as a journalist, as a politics and policy columnist for The Toronto Star, an editorial writer at The Globe and Mail, and as an editorial assistant at Slate magazine. He also taught leadership at the University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance. Karim holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

He is the son of immigrants from Egypt and England, and grew up in Bathurst, New Brunswick. He and his wife are raising their two children in Toronto’s west end.

If you are a former student and would like to book office hours with Karim, please click here.