About Me

I have been working with organizations developing innovative responses to complex issues for thirty years in Europe and Canada:

  1. An investment advisor in Poland’s Foreign Investment Agency (1990-91).
  2. The Foreign Assistance Coordinator for Grants in Poland’s Ministry of Privatization (1992).
  3. The Mission Coordinator for the United Nations Development Program’s first regional economic development initiative in Eastern Europe (1993).
  4. Coordinator of the Waterloo Region’s Opportunities 2000 project, a “prototypical” collective impact initiative that won provincial, national and international awards for its multi-sector approach to reducing poverty (1995-2000).
  5. Executive Director of the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) (2000-01).
  6. Vice President, Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement, and the Executive Director of Vibrant Communities Canada (2002-2011).

In 2011, I established Here to There Consulting Inc. to work more directly with groups working on tough issues – such as poverty, homelessness, academic achievement and community safety — in Canada, the United States and beyond.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt