Cultural Nexus Group is an urban strategy practice founded and led by André Darmanin in Toronto. The name reflects the work. Where cultures, policy and mobility meet, that nexus is where good urban decisions get made.

André spent two decades in transit operations, planning and policy before widening his practice to housing, cultural planning and equity. Through that work, he kept meeting the same problem. Strategies that read well and failed anyway, because the people writing them had modelled everything except how residents actually live and move. Cultural intelligence became the practice's centre of gravity for that reason. Decisions about cities are cultural decisions, whether leadership admits it or not.

Today, the practice works with public sector and non-profit organizations across four services. Strategic planning, policy analysis and advisory, cultural intelligence services, and facilitation and stakeholder engagement. To date, clients have ranged across public sector agencies in health care and social services that need an experienced, independent perspective on difficult questions.

The approach is comparative by instinct. Organizations and their leaders have much to learn from other cultures and just as much to teach. That reading, combined with ground-level operational experience in how decisions actually get made, is what the practice brings to every engagement.

Toronto is home. The outlook is global.