PEC Placemaking is a company formed by Tim Jones and Assaf Weisz to represent their interests as partners in the Picton Airport and Loch Sloy Business Park redevelopment.
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Assaf is an accomplished leader and social entrepreneur in creative placemaking, urban development, and social purpose business. He is deeply passionate about the role of neighbours, arts & culture, and sustainability in the formation of new communities. Assaf is co-owner with Tim Jones in PEC Placemaking - a new company that is a partner in the redevelopment of a 700-acre site in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
He previously served as Chief Strategy & Development Officer at Artscape, a renowned urban development organization focused on arts & culture spaces. While there, Assaf created Atelier, a leading provider of creative placemaking services for the urban development industry which reimagined cities as canvasses for art & culture. Prior to that, he co-founded & led Purpose Capital, Canada's leading impact investment advisory firm. Purpose Capital was acquired in 2017 and now operates as Rally asset Management.
Assaf taught Social Entrepreneurship at York University's Schulich School of Business and the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Engineering. He also served as National Director for Nexus Global, a global network of next-generation investors and entrepreneurs, as a Fellow of the Brookfield Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and as a Fellow of the Ariane de Rothschild Foundation. In 2014 he was presented with the Possibilities Thinker award, and in 2013 he was profiled as a Canadian Under 30 Who Is Changing The Country by the CBC.
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Change-maker, social entrepreneur and thought leader, Tim Jones has made profound and unique contributions to arts, culture and urban development communities in Toronto, Canada and around the world. His work has evolved over the past four decades in three distinct but related career phases. In his early career as part of the senior leadership of Toronto’s queer theatre company Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, he built a cultural platform that empowered LGBTQ2S+ artists to define new identities, shift cultural narratives and in the process helped pave the way for previously unthinkable advances in human rights.
Next, over a ten-year relationship with The Canada Council for the Arts, Timplayed a catalytic role in strengthening Canada’s national theatre ecosystem. As Artscape of CEO from 1998 - 2021, Tim gained recognition as a global leader in leveraging the power of arts and culture as catalysts for change in urban and community development. Today, Tim is a Principal of Creative Placemaking Inc. and a co-owner with Assaf Weisz in PEC Placemaking - a new company that is a partner in the redevelopment of a 700-acre site in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Tim’s ground-breaking approaches in all phases of his career have been rooted in his deep understanding of the value and power of arts and culture as a driver of change, growth and transformation. His social enterprise acumen helped Artscape pioneer innovative new models and scale up its achievements. Tim is recognized as a thought leader ‘creative placemaking’, a term that he coined in 2006 that has since become a global field of practice.
He has won numerous awards, spoken in more than 75 cities and communities, is a trusted advisor to the World Cities Culture Forum, a contributor to the World Economic Forum, and in 2014, was recognized by the Geneva-based Schwab Foundation as a Social Entrepreneur of the Year.