Meet Naama Blonder, RBC Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards Micro-Business Finalist

Naama Blonder has a bold vision: to change what good housing can and should look like in a growing city like Toronto; with that in mind, she co-founded Smart Density. Her professional practice combines the disciplines of architecture, urban planning, and urban design to bring a deeper, more realistic understanding of how cities can address housing affordability and champion inclusive neighbourhoods with more equitable access to housing. Her work has received numerous awards including the prestigious Ontario Association of Architects’ Best Emerging Practice Award for 2022. To fight the stigma around housing, Blonder’s work seeks to inform both residents and industry colleagues about the mutually beneficial outcomes of reimagining what our big cities can look like with greater access to established public transport, shortened commutes, improved housing costs and vacancy rates, greater diversity in housing, and strengthened local economies and communities. She practices what she preaches, living with her husband and two children in a multi-family building in a transit-accessible area of Toronto, where the park is their backyard.

I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur when… I started architecture school. I guess I didn’t even know how entrepreneurial I was before that.  

Entrepreneurship is made for me because… I love getting things done; the bigger, the better.

The impact I hope to make through my work… is to create a cultural shift in the way we talk, think, design, and build housing.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned on my entrepreneurial journey is… never stop learning and educating yourself.

My proudest accomplishment is… hearing from the people I meet that I am making an impact on Toronto’s housing.

The biggest risk I took that paid off was… starting my own business. 

My biggest setback has been… not being able to meet people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I overcame it by… starting to create short videos and talk about housing-related topics I found interesting, and I just assumed others would do too. I was right.

The best advice I’ve received as an entrepreneur was… “Never stop learning.”

I surprise people when I tell them… that I don’t own a car and we raise our family in a condo downtown.

If I had an extra hour in the day, I would use it to… drink more coffee, probably, and think about what the next big thing I could work on or create would be. 

If you googled me, you… will probably learn about me much more than you would need to anyway. 

The future excites me because… the future excites me, period.

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