About

A. GREGORY (GREG) FRANKSON is a consultant and employee retention specialist with extensive experience helping public, private, and nonprofit organizations foster inclusive environments. He provides strategic guidance on creating equitable policies, building diverse teams, and driving cultural transformation. Frankson's work emphasizes sustainable change and amplifying marginalized voices within professional settings.

A. GREGORY FRANKSON has published his words in four poetry collections, six anthologies, and numerous newspapers and literary journals. Greg is a former national poetry slam champion and on-air poetic commentator on CBC Radio One in Toronto. Currently, he serves on the board of directors for Canada SCORES and is the artistic director of the Canadian Black Literary Festival and BlackLit Durham. Greg’s first book of creative nonfiction, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters, was released by Rare Machines (Dundurn Press) in January 2025.

A. GREGORY FRANKSON is an award-winning poet, author, educator, speaker, and consultant based in Toronto. His multidisciplinary career includes editing the acclaimed AfriCANthology: Perspectives of Black Canadian Poets and publishing four poetry collections — Cerebral Stimulation, Lead on a Page, A Weekly Dose of Ritallin, and Cerebral Confections. His latest book, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters (Dundurn Press, 2025), marks his debut in creative nonfiction, featuring twenty-six epistolary essays written in poetic prose, each exploring themes like identity, ancestry, intimacy, and survival. Through candid and lyrical reflections, Frankson examines the intersections of personal experience and universal truth with vulnerability and artistry. Noted for his impactful advocacy in diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, Frankson’s work resonates with audiences seeking both emotional depth and intellectual rigour.

Greg Frankson, OCT, B.Ed. is a Toronto-based writer, educator, and community activist. As Founder & Lead Consultant for Voice Share Inc., he helps his inclusive leadership clients through customized coaching, mentorship and training programs and delivers creative services at public events as a poet-in-residence, emcee, performance artist, and professional speaker. He worked in the public, private and nonprofit sectors as a diversity, anti-discrimination and anti-racism facilitator for over two decades. Greg serves clients in the nonprofit, labour, postsecondary education, financial services, real estate, legal, marketing, and technology sectors. He has also served as an in-house diversity, equity, and inclusion advisor in public and nonprofit organizations at the regional and national level.

Greg has been presenting, emceeing, and speaking at mental health, DEI, and health equity events since the late 1990s. He has participated at gatherings in North America and internationally penning poetic reflections on the current state of Canadian healthcare and global mental health systems. He served as Poet Laureate for the International Initiative for Mental Health Leadership and worked on projects with Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Services, Schizophrenia Society of Ontario, Mental Health Commission of Canada, and the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health (USA), among others.

Greg has published four poetry collections, released four studio audio recordings, edited and contributed to the acclaimed 2022 collection AfriCANthology: Perspective of Black Canadian Poets, and appeared in five other anthologies. His full-length creative nonfiction debut, Alphabet Soup: A Memoir in Letters, was published by Dundurn Press in January 2025. Greg’s op-eds, poems, and articles have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Write Magazine, blogTO, and Rabble, among other publications, and he is a former resident poet on CBC Radio One’s Here and Now Toronto.

In addition to his artistic achievements, Greg was the first Black Canadian to serve as president of Canada’s oldest undergraduate student government at Queen’s University in 1996-97. He led a successful student advocacy effort for Queen’s to commemorate Robert Sutherland, Canada’s first Black university graduate, Queen’s first major benefactor, and the first Black lawyer in British North America. In 2009, the University rededicated its Policy Studies Building as Robert Sutherland Hall.

Greg has earned numerous awards and accolades over the past two decades, including the Ajax Arts & Culture Community Award, the ByBlacks.com People’s Choice Award for Best Author, the Canada Book Award, induction to the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour, a Canadian national poetry slam championship, and an Honoured Man of the Village Award from Every Child is Sacred in Ottawa. He was also nominated for the Madiba Award, a Black Canadian Award for Spoken Word, and the A.E. McRae Award for Creative Leadership.

Greg’s current community engagement includes serving as artistic director of Canadian Black Literary Festival/BlackLit Durham and membership on the Canada SCORES board of directors. Past service includes the Abilities Centre IDEA Advisory Council, Queen’s University Council, and board memberships for The King’s Trust Canada, Voice for Mental Health Collective, Spoken Word Canada, and Tropicana Community Services.