Oh My! Handmade

Making a good life since 2010

About Jessika Hepburn

I am an experienced community organizer, educator, and award winning entrepreneur of Black and Jewish descent. I started editing Oh My! Handmade Goodness (OMHG) in 2010 as young entrepreneur who had been running a handmade business and parenting full time since 2003. OMHG was a place to offer resources, advocacy, and community for the maker movement while having a platform to share ideas about making a good life. OMHG grew to 50+ contributors from around the world reaching millions of visitors a month and became a leader in the handmade community advocating ethics, best practices, and peer support.

Starting in 2014 with co-organizer Fatema Sidat we began hosting Etsy Made in Canada events in Halifax, piloting Etsy Maker Cities initiatives in two provinces and developing Maritime Makers as a resource for regional creative entrepreneurs and event organizers across Atlantic Canada. In June 2016 our family purchased a historic community cafe in the town of Mahone Bay and worked together at The Biscuit Eater Cafe & Books to gather community around a common table that centred Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, community care, and local food security.

In 2019 I ran for federal office with the NDP in my riding of South Shore St Margarets as the only person of Black descent to run for any political party in the province of Nova Scotia. Recently I have built my anti-racist muscle through mussar and training as a Dismantling Racism from the Inside Out facilitator with the Kirva Institute, supporting Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) as a member-leader, and standing shoulder to shoulder with my mentor and dear friend Louise Delisle in her work to address environmental racism and tell the untold stories of Shelburne’s African Nova Scotian community.

I am currently accepting values aligned clients for consulting, brand design & development, event production and workshop facilitation. Please email me at editor@ohmyhandmade.com to discuss your project and how I can support.

To see a portfolio of past projects and design visit here.

Presentations: 

  • Dismantling racism and injustice
  • Solidarity and mutual aid organizing
  • Maker movement and handmade entrepreneurship
  • Community organizing, mapping & planning
  • Online community building, hybrid, and virtual events
  • Collaboration and collective action
  • Organizational/system change, circular and sociocratic organizing

Workshops & Facilitation:

  • Leadership and community organizing
  • Dismantling racism from the inside out
  • Asset based community development
  • Community resource mapping
  • Open space technology

Consultation: 

  • Asset based community/resource mapping
  • Non-profit governance and strategic planning
  • Policy & procedure development
  • Organizational/system change
  • Social enterprise and small business development
  • Event production for hybrid and virtual events
  • Online community building and engagement

Community Organizing: 

  • Facilitation of community events or processes
  • Community & citizen engagement
  • Event organization and planning
  • Pop up coordination
  • Online organizing
  • Social campaigns
  • Fundraising

Past projects: 

See more projects and design portfolio here.

Selected Essays/Interviews/Articles: 

1982-2024 Career Timeline