Marcelo Paladino Castro is a PhD student in the Program in Adult Education and Community Development, Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Marcelo also has a Masters in Latin American Studies from Simon Fraser University and a BA (Hons) in Engineering from the University of Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Marcelo’ s research interest is on digital platform co-operatives; community development; social movements; social movement learning; and social economy. His dissertation will examine the practices of learning and knowledge creation that unfold in and about the global movement of platform co-operativism, whose ideals of collective ownership of firms, democratic decision-making and co-operation are norms rooted on solidarity; platform co-ops are quickly spreading worldwide as an alternative to platform capitalism, and are a model of social innovation in the online sharing economy. Before joining the Co-opConvert research team, Marcelo worked for fourteen years in community development and health promotion. Marcelo has a passion for community engagement and leadership capacity building to address systemic inequalities.