Catherine Diallo: Building Bridges Between Law, Language, and Justice
This month, we are proud to feature Catherine Diallo (she/her) as our ACTivist of the Month. Catherine is trained as a lawyer, experienced as a regulatory adviser and now practising as a certified translator in high-stakes legal and financial contexts. She volunteers with us as our Translation expert.
What makes her story powerful is not only her professional path, but her belief that activism is not about volume, visibility, or applause. Instead, it is about precision, everyday choices, and the courage to make systems more humane.
To Catherine,
Translation isn’t just about accuracy; it’s about dignity.
Let’s get to know more about her.
To begin, could you tell us a little about yourself and your background.
I was born to a Malian father and a German mother. I grew up in Germany in the 1980s, where I often felt pressured to fit into a system that seemed impossible to fully comply with. I completed my law studies in Berlin, went through my legal traineeship, and fully qualified as a lawyer. Afterward, I worked in Luxembourg as a regulatory adviser before my path began to broaden.
In 2015, I immigrated to Canada and spent the past decade working as a certified translator in high-stakes legal and financial contexts, while also carving out time for writing and activism. What ties all of these roles together is my fascination with detail. I love digging into complex systems, spotting the small things others might overlook, and making sense of them clearly and precisely.
What are your interests and passions? What have you learned from your journey so far?
Over time, I’ve come to believe that many real answers lie in financial and economic empowerment of people. Living in Canada and seeing the situation of many immigrant skilled workers I came to this realisation.
Frankly, I couldn’t and still cannot believe how many qualified people find themselves having to start from the very bottom in this country after being selected by the government for the very skills that don’t seem to count after landing. That’s why I care very strongly about entrepreneurship and creating pathways for independence.
She adds that ideologies and identity politics shaped parts of her journey but often proved limiting. Her energy now is on building practical tools.
I’m currently learning the ins and outs of financial advisory and studying the CSC (Canadian Securities Course). It feels like a very important step for my personal and professional development.
She believes that true empowerment often requires making choices that align with one’s values, even when those choices are economically challenging.
Being an economic activist necessarily means setting boundaries, including turning away certain work.
I was once approached for a lucrative contract to translate materials for a Canadian cosmetics company intending to expand into the DACH market. Their website prominently featured Indigenous imagery. When I inquired about how Indigenous peoples were included in their profit-sharing model, the response I received was silence. Despite the financial appeal of the contract, I ultimately declined. There was no way I could ethically attach my name to that project.
What inspires you most about the intersection of technology, human rights, and social justice?
Technology can be a barrier, but it can also be an incredible equaliser. What inspires me is how quickly it’s now possible to reach people in literally every corner of the world.
I also love how ego isn’t part of the equation when a chatbot is involved.
Too often, activism becomes about how the helper wants to see themselves, not about what the other person actually needs. With a chatbot, you erase that problem. That’s pretty awesome!
For Catherine, technology is powerful not because it dazzles but because it levels the playing field, and sometimes, even removes ego from activism.
How did you first connect with Spring ACT and the work we’re doing? What drew you in?
That’s the funniest story! I was following Saira Rao, one of the authors of White Women, on LinkedIn. One day, I noticed she’d been tagged in a post by Rhiana Spring, the Founder of Spring ACT, who was actively promoting the book, holding it right up to the camera.
I remember being genuinely shocked, in the best way. I wasn’t used to seeing a white woman so openly and unapologetically promote a book that tackles the ways in which white feminism upholds the oppression of racialised women.
Most importantly, Rhiana didn’t use the word ‘ally’, a term that is often thrown around like confetti and that means very little to nothing in many, if not most cases. So, I added her to my network. That moment was my entry point.
Can you share a highlight from your experience of working with Spring ACT, something that felt meaningful or stood out for you?
One highlight was realising that the smallest linguistic decisions, such as, a single word choice could make the difference between someone feeling seen or feeling dismissed.
It reminded me that translation isn’t just about accuracy; it’s about dignity. That felt deeply meaningful.
For Catherine, translation became more than technical precision. In the context of Sophia, it stood out to her as a lifeline.
Through your role, how do you see activism fitting into your everyday work and life?
You don’t need to show up at every demonstration to ‘earn’ the activist label, and you don’t have to be neatly slotted into a certain political corner.
For me, activism is about the choices we make every day, the way we use our skills, and how we treat the people around us.
Sometimes that looks like offering my translation services free of charge, sometimes like mentoring young Black law students through Afrodeutsche Jurist:innen, Germany’s first association for Black lawyers and law students.
To her, activism is a steady and deliberate commitment to impact over visibility.
What has been your biggest learning or takeaway from working with Spring ACT?
My biggest takeaway is that tech-driven activism only works if it listens first. It’s tempting to believe that clever design or perfect code will fix things, but the reality is that the people we’re trying to serve already know what they need.
The role of technology is to amplify that, not overwrite it. That’s a lesson I’d love to see transcend other forms of activism and ‘help.’
How does your activism or professional path connect to your vision for the future?
For me, it’s about impact. Writing shapes narratives, finance shapes choices, and translation, just like technology, builds bridges. I don’t see them as separate.
My vision is to merge them into a professional life that’s both creative and practical, one where I can help people navigate systems, tell their own stories, and build real independence.
If you could give one piece of advice to another professional or young activist thinking of joining ACT, what would it be?
Don’t underestimate the value of your skills, even if they don’t look like “traditional activism.”
Whether you’re a coder, a translator, or a lawyer, there’s a way to bring that expertise into this work. Justice movements need many different kinds of hands.
What’s your vision of an injustice-free world?
To me, a fair society is one where the ground is level enough that effort, creativity, and resilience can genuinely shape a person’s future. It will never be perfectly fair, but we can do much better than what we have now.
Catherine imagines fairness as both structural and personal. Her idea of justice is pragmatic yet hopeful, grounded in equity, transparency, and shared responsibility.
I believe in business and in being rewarded for hard work, but the deeper question is whose work we choose to value, and why. Essential workers, caregivers, stay-at-home parents: they keep society running, yet their contributions are chronically undervalued. The pandemic made that clear, but it shouldn’t take a crisis to remind us that without these people, nothing else functions. And part of that fairness starts at the top. Governments need to lead by example, especially when it comes to financial transparency and accountability.
So, my vision is a world where ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ is actually possible for everyone, because everyone has bootstraps to begin with.
What are your top three takeaways from your experience with Spring ACT?
- “On a personal level, I’ve learned that translation isn’t just a technical service here, it’s part of building trust. The difference between a chatbot that feels safe and one that feels cold can come down to the tiniest choices in tone, register, or cultural nuance.
- What also struck me at Spring ACT was realising that AI, in the right hands, isn’t just ‘useful’, it can actually be a lifeline. Seeing it applied to protect and empower survivors reframed it for me completely.
- Finally, I’ve seen the power of honesty in activism. Spring ACT acknowledges regional realities without pretending that problems disappear just because resources are more available in rich countries. Domestic violence is global, and acknowledging that truth, without sugarcoating or denying differences, is what makes the work meaningful.”
Do you have a favourite quote that inspires you?
If you find yourself always needing others to explain, hold space, or educate you, but never asking: What do I give back? How do I show up? You’re not learning, you’re taking.
– Lovette Jallow
Looking ahead, Catherine is drawn to merging writing, finance, and analysis, building tools that are not just insightful but practical for real change.
Catherine Diallo reminds us that activism wears many faces. It can look like standing on a protest stage, but it can also look like an empowering translation so that a survivor feels heard rather than dismissed.
Her story is a call to value the quiet labour of justice, the unseen decisions, the bridge-building across cultures, the patience to listen before acting. In a world that often confuses activism with performance, Catherine’s path shows us that real impact is measured not by how loudly we speak, but by how deeply we care.
– Written by Mustapha Lawal
