Am Johal is a community and cultural leader with experience in government, non-profit, policy, advocacy, environmental movements and arts and culture. Am has been Chair of the Vancouver International Film Festival, Indian Summer Festival, 221A, Co-Chair of the Vancity Community Foundation and is a past member of the Vancouver City Planning Commission.

For fourteen years, Am was the Director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement and for six years, the Co-Director of SFU’s Community Engaged Research Initiative. With collaborators, he has published four books and taught in SFU’s Graduate Liberal Studies, School for Contemporary Arts and the Semester in Dialogue. In 2007, he took part in Vancity’s Bologna Cooperative Leadership program.