Lia Grimanis
Lia Grimanis is a successful businesswoman, adventurer, keynote speaker and philanthropist. She is the founder of Up With Women, an organization dedicated to helping homeless women and children to rebuild their lives.
AbOUT Up With Women
Grimanis founded the organization to give women and children inspiration and strategies for rebuilding their lives after homelessness. Grimanis was driven to establish Up With Women because of her time spent as a homeless teenager. Up With Women's mission: Success Belongs to Everybody
Up With Women works to:
- Raise public awareness about women's homelessness, through community outreach and media relations. Up With Women's media work aims to share positive stories about formerly homeless women and children who have rebuilt their lives. The media work also works to highlight key issues surrounding women's and family homelessness, while engaging the public to support the cause of ending homelessness, poverty and violence against women.
- Provide advanced career and life-building education for homeless and recently homeless women.
- Provide leadership mentoring for formerly homeless children to help them to become leaders in their communities. Up With Women Child Advocates participate in a variety of projects. One of the more notable activities is to create a community action project and creatively give back to the community.
Biography
Grimanis has almost 20 years of experience as a successful businesswoman and entrepreneur. Success in business was a goal she had set for herself while she was homeless.
On a civic level, she has served on the Toronto Mayor’s Communications Advisory team, with a special focus on the Mayor’s “Opportunity for All” platform. She served as a media strategist and she wrote the Mayor’s Opportunity for All platform speech.
The global businesswomen’s organization, The International Alliance for Women, recognized Grimanis as one of 50 women around the world making a notable impact on the economic empowerment of women, and she was named Volunteer of the Year by Flare Magazine. Grimanis has also been nominated as one of Canada's Top 40 Under 40.
Grimanis has been involved in a variety of community engagements, outside of Up With Women. She is a co-founder of Toronto based Social Venture Partners , an organization that blends the power of business with the passion of philanthropy to assist grass roots organizations that are focused on poverty reduction. She sits on the advisory board of Future Possibilities for Kids, and has also worked in partnership with the United Way, the Canadian Women’s Foundation and Raising the Roof.
Grimanis has frequently appeared in the media, having had news and story features appear on Global TV, CTV, CBC, City TV, More Magazine, the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun and more. She focuses in on the media to help disseminate the positive stories of women and children coming out of homelessness, while raising awareness about the issues today.
She is frequently asked to give speeches to such diverse groups as business people, women's groups, sales professionals, community service providers, and government workers.