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Sandy Pandya
Business
Executive Spotlight: Sandy Pandya on Building ArtHaus, Fostering Community and Championing Artist Empowerment
As she prepares to receive the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award at the 2026 Juno Awards this March, the ArtHaus founder talks about sustainability, mentorship, the future of independent music and the thriving community she has built in Toronto’s West End.
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Sandy Pandya has spent most of her career saying no to interviews — not because she didn’t have stories to tell, but because she’s always wanted the focus to stay on her artists.
“I’m not the star, it’s these people,” she says, talking about the artists she works with. “My job is to elevate [their music] and get it to where it needs to go.”
Still, the last few years have shifted what “behind the scenes” looks like — especially as ArtHaus, the Toronto-based music company she owns, continues to expand its not-for-profit and community work.
At the 2026 Juno Awards, Pandya — a true legend who has worked with some of the biggest names in Canadian music — will receive the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, an honour given to “individuals who have contributed to the growth and development of the Canadian music industry.”
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When Allan Reid, president and CEO of CARAS, the organization that administers the Junos, personally arrived at the lofty former pickle factory in Toronto’s Little Portugal where ArtHaus has its hub just down the street from its studio and artist house, she had a list of people — many women — who she thought deserved the recognition. He agreed, she says, but first insisted she also deserves it now.
Since it was announced, Pandya says the award has already given her renewed leverage to approach public and private agencies for ArtHaus Community’s not-for-profit work. In practical terms, it gave her a stronger way to walk into meetings with public and private agencies to discuss funding, which is important for the work she does, which includes subsidized housing and studio spaces so artists and budding executives can work.
“We need public funds for us to be able to do that work,” she explains. “A lot of it is our own money, but there’s only so much I can do on my own.”
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Speaking from that same hub, a block away from ArtHaus’s studio space, Pandya defines ArtHaus as “a cultural multimedia company,” struggling to pigeonhole all the different work the organization does: management, label and publishing work.
It’s a fruitful time for ArtHaus, with artist Adria Kain getting nominated for a Juno for R&B recording of the year for the second time, Gold-selling singer TALK preparing a new album (and members of his band starting the new band, It Comes to Life), live-in tenant/management client Kuzi Cee getting signed to Universal Music Canada, radio success with Badchild, an artist on the label roster, Yanchan becoming the first South Asian artist signed on the publishing side and Filipino-Canadian artist Raymond Salgado gearing up for a new release — just to name a few.
But Pandya is just as proud of the growing set of community programs with ArtHaus Community that were born during the pandemic — a rare period where she had “room to sit and dream.”
She also traces her own path: leaving Kenya as a child, landing in Saskatchewan, and finding her way into music through Café A Go Go, a DIY space she built in Regina that became known for its hospitality and creative energy. The common factor with all of it is community — how to foster it, how to pay it forward, and how to build the support so it can build lasting careers in culture.
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When someone asks you what ArtHaus is, how do you define it?
I don’t ever say we’re a label, we’re a publishing company, we’re a management company. I think it’s the future of what this business can look like. Most of my career has been management, and then this not-for-profit’s really been born out of the pandemic.
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Usually, my phone’s ringing at 4 in the morning because somebody’s stuck somewhere or someone had a breakdown. Now, we had time to sit and dream. For me, it’s a full circle to where I come from, what my roots are.
How did your career start?
I’m an immigrant. We left Africa in a pretty intense situation. My sister and I got tear gassed in Kenya and we were separated from our family for days on end. My dad said, ok, it’s too dangerous, we’re going to have to leave. So we came to Canada and moved to Regina, Saskatchewan. I still remember snow up to here.
My dad opened a restaurant in Regina. We were maybe the first or second East Indian family there. There was intense racism. It was my three brothers, myself, my parents. My parents worked all the time, so essentially my brother and I raised the kids.
How did you get into the music industry?
I fluked into it. I started a cafe, Café A Go Go. The café started so we could pay tuition. I studied psychology and sociology. I was either going to be a criminal lawyer or work in psychology. At night we’d convert the restaurant into tie-dyed curtains and tablecloths. It became really famous. If you were a big Canadian band, you’d come jam at my place. 54-40 a zillion times, Chalk Circle, Rheostatics, Change of Heart. We did art exhibits, poetry readings, dub poetry. All the big writers of that time, Sean Virgo, Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier, all these people had their first kind of book readings in my cafe. It was like a real cool scene. We did art exhibits, poetry readings — it was a multimedia place.
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I didn't see TV till I was 10 years old. The first time I ever heard a record I was probably 12 years old. We didn't have those things in Africa. It was [born] out of a necessity. We were all students, and we all split the profits. And it was super successful.
How is the spirit of Café A Go Go reflected in the work you do now?
If there was a big lineup, we’d bring you a samosa. If you waited in line, we’d bring you water. We treated people with respect and dignity. We treated the artists that way. If you treat people great, you can get way more out of them than if you’re disrespectful and rude. That idea of community and treating people like family — that’s what this is for me.
What were some of the hardest realities you faced during your early career?
The worst was what came from being a woman. I remember the amount of times I got the proposition, “I’ll play your cafe if…” — you can fill in the blanks. I was mortified.
Later, I remember working at RCA [Records] and being told girls couldn’t wear jeans to work. That was part of the job interview. Girls are only allowed to wear jeans every second Friday. I would go to bed with all my clothes on because I had to wake up, jump into my shoes, brush my teeth, get into my car to drive an hour to get to work. When the office moved downtown, I was like, “No.” I wore jeans. I got called into the office and I said, “Kiss my ass,” and walked out. That was that.
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As an artist manager, you were an early advocate for record deal structures that protected artists long-term. What were you asking for that others weren’t?
I had an artist in a bidding war. I thought, if we’re in this situation, what can we ask for? I asked for things like a glam squad, mental health structures for our artists, safety nets, travel budgets so I’m not coming by bus to meetings because I can’t afford to get there. A lot of it was being creative and asking for things that typically weren't in record deals.
In another bidding war, I asked for shares in the company. My thinking was, if it’s publicly traded and the shares go up because of this artist, it made sense we should receive some of those shares. It was a big deal. I got a call from Edgar Bronfman about it. I was nervous. Now, Warner gives shares to all their artists. I don't know if that inspired that, but I can tell you as the first person to do that, people would always clap when I walked through those hallways.
I’ve always been thinking about what’s in the artist’s best interest and how to make careers sustainable.
Now, it seems a lot of what you’re doing is paving the way for the next generation — especially women and BIPOC artists and executives. How are you trying to nurture that here at ArtHaus?
I'm so passionate about the next generation of artists and entrepreneurs, and so a lot of what I'm doing these days is really mentoring to give those folks the tools and resources that I definitely did not have — education, infrastructure, business acumen. Managers and artists these days need to be entrepreneurs. And mental health tools. That’s so important, and it’s wide ranging. If you can't afford your rent, that's a mental health problem. You can't afford groceries, that's a mental health problem.
I've got a remarkable team of people that I mentored that work here, all brilliant in their own right.
You started ArtHaus as a community live-work space during the pandemic alongside the artist Serena Ryder. What inspired that?
That all again was a necessity. As you know, we were the hardest hit industry in the pandemic. It was devastating for so many of the creatives. Serena and I had gotten the house, which was an artist house back in the day. We had an open door policy. You could come in and ask us any question.
We started to do mental health classes with Serena, who had been through her own mental health journey. We started to do online classes on Zoom. It was rammed, all full of artists. We'd get therapists that were specific to the LGBTQ community, or the Black community or the Asian community, the Indigenous community. We launched a coffee [a collaboration with Propeller and Unison Benevolent Fund] to support emergency relief services and mental health support.
Then I was at a conference called Business is Better with Music, and I ran into PortsToronto at Billy Bishop Airport and I said, “Look, our industry is really hard hit. Can I sell my coffee at Billy Bishop and have artists play there?” We did a partnership with the City of Toronto and Ontario Creates. There were hardly any travelers, but the ones that were, they tipped in addition to the few hundred bucks we were paying. You got to buy groceries or pay some of your rent.
Now, we're partners with so many different organizations ,like our award-winning program with ADVANCE. It's called Inside Live, and it's about communities from the outskirts of Toronto, letting them know music's a viable option. Our emerging musicians program with Canada's Walk of Fame was really exciting. It’s so many things that it feels like were meant to be.
In 2025, you launched SAMA — the South Asian Music Accelerator. What inspired that?
That’s our signature program right now. For us, we really wanna make it sit on a global stage, not just North America.
A lot of that South Asian community is not part of the music business in the way you would think. They’re not going to all these music organizations and becoming members. So, where we're advertising to find the next Diljit [Dosanjh] would be in the gurdwaras and the temples and the grocery stores. Ridgeway Plaza, we’re putting our posters up in there. It’s really wherever the community is hanging out, we're going where that community is.
Ninad Tripathi is a co-founder with me. He was working with South Asian artists in Halifax. We started talking about how it would be great to let that section of folks have the opportunity to come into the industry and give them the opportunity, education, wellness, mentorship, collaborations — all of it.
Wouldn't it be cool if we made Toronto what Nashville is to country music, but to South Asian music?
We really were fortunate. RBC came in right away and said “We'll help you if you can find money for the other half.” We talked to our friends at Coalition and [producer] Ikky came on board as our brand ambassador.
For us, it's not just about Punjabi music, it's really about uniting that industry. There’s so many different dialects. I'm Gujarati. If you're Hindi you might not listen to Punjabi music or Bengali or Kashmiri. We’re trying to just not have a conquer and divide mentality, we're going to be unified and move as a team. A win for one is a win for all of us.
What do you see as the biggest issue facing the music industry right now?
The obvious answer is AI, but I’ll answer it differently. It’s content overload.
Because anybody can put their music up, there isn’t the time taken to curate it and go, “Is this really amazing? Is this something the world needs to hear?” Everyone’s just uploading whatever. It’s creating such a glut. There’s so much music.
We need to take a breath and take a minute. Wait until you’re ready to put out the thing. Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.
The entire ecosystem is about experiences. Music gives us those moments — the first time you kissed someone, the first time you went somewhere. We need that connection. A great song is a great song.
What’s missing right now is authentic A&R and curation. If you’re going to do something, be great at it. Don’t just hammer social media because the data says to. Put out quality.
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