About Me

Robert is the President of The Renewal Consulting Group Inc. which was founded in 1994. The motto of our firm is "Looking Beneath the Surface". We provide our clients with the deep insight and broad context that they often need to find solutions to novel situations.

For instance we developed a contextual picture, for Veterans Affairs, of all the issues related to the aging of Canada that provided VAC with the policy background to launch a strategy for seniors in Canada. We did the same type of deep context for the web and the digital divide enabling Industry Canada to launch its web strategy for Schools in Canada.

We have just completed an exceptionally complex assignment of this type helping NPR and 300 community Radio Stations define their challenges and opportunities in the new digital age.

Prior to running his own business, Rob worked for Dr Fraser Mustard, President of the CIAR, as his Senior Advisor for Outreach.

Before that he held a number of senior roles at CIBC. These roles included SVP HR for the bank where he was responsible for the bank's HR strategic direction, SVP Marketing for CIBC Investment Bank where he was responsible for the merger and integration of Wood Gundy and the bank. ED New Issues for CIBC Limited in London where he built the first part of CIBC's international investment banking business and AD Middle East for Wood Gundy where he established their business in Saudi Arabia.

Rob is deeply involved in community work. In Toronto he was a director of the Smile Theatre company that brings theatre to shut in seniors. In the US he was a director of the Marion Foundation that incubates new ideas about health and the environment. He is an active advisor to CHANCES Family Resources Centre on PEI, to Sport PEI, to Theatre PEI and to FRP Canada (The national body of family resource centres).

Recent Representative Work includes:

New Realities for NPR and Public Radio in the US
Using a virtual team of colleagues, we worked with NPR to help the entire public radio system, more than 300 stations and 1,000 people from every part of the US, bring into sight a common view of the threats and opptunities that confront the public radio system as the new digital reality changes all prior assumptions and the way of doing business. The process also helped re-establish a great deal of trust that had been eroded by the fears aroused by the new. An important part of the supporting tools we used was a private web based intranet that enabled all the geographically and culturally diverse parties to follow what was going on in real time and that put the voice of the customer at the front.

The BioAlliance PEI
Worked with the ED to help him develop a plan, then an organization and a supporting technology platform to develop a cluster and a community of scientists at NRC, the Province, UPEI and Bio Tech Business leaders that are working to create an enterprise that we hope will start to replace PEI's reliance on commodity agriculture. The heart of the project is the idea of community. The project looks very hard at how PEI can best attract and retain key knowledge workers in a rural setting and at what PEI has to do to ensure a flow of talented young Islanders will support the cluster.

CHANCES Family Resource Centre
We now understand that our social and cultural experience as a baby and then as a small child drives a trajectory for all our future ability to work, to have good health and to have high social and learning capabilities. Helping our parents deliver the best experience for their babies and small children is the most leveraged place to work to improve a society's human capital. This idea is central to our ongoing work with CHANCES. We have worked directly with the ED and her board (Community Based) to take CHANCES from a tiny organization to being the largest NGO in the province with major support from the community and from all levels of government. CHANCES now operates within a network of 7 sites and offers services to all parents on PEI

Queen Street Commons
Increasingly people either leave the conventional workforce or many young never want to join it. We helped develop and operate the Queen Street Commons which is a social/work nexus for people who want to work for themselves but who also need the social and the cross fertilization that comes from being part of a community. This idea is spreading all over the developed world now and may be a model that can help any community gain more power and traction. It also serves as a very useful community based platform for venture capital and for expanding the experience of being an entrepreneur.

Social Software - Breaking Down the Silos
Most of us know that the silos get in the way of innovation and speed. But until recently there have not been any tools that really help us both do our job and also see how what we do fits across and up and down the organization. We have designed & piloted a private web intranet that is very simple to use for a major NB based food services company that now gets immediate feedback from the front line into corporate, allows the front line to talk with each other and allows the CEO to see the entire picture in real time.

Breadth of Work and Experience

Education Sector
5 years of online teaching at the School of Management at UPEI - Teaching Sustainable and Networked Business using Social Software as the tool
Advisor to the President of UPEI and to the DM of Higher Education - Strategic Issues facing Higher Education
Advisor to the President of Holland College - Strategic issues facing Colleges
Advisor to the Principal of UTS - University of Toronto Schools - Cultural and Learning Issues facing High Schools
Advisor to the VP Students York University - Defining the new student Experience
Advisor to the VP Students Dalhousie University - The Student Experience
Outreach Advisor to the President of CIAR - Canadian Institute for Advanced Learning Human Development Program

Research Sector
Advising the government of PEI on how best to develop a BIO Science Cluster on PEI - The Belvedere Group that has now evolved into the BIo Alliance
Advising the World Bank in their review of the PEI Economy

Health & Social Services Sector
Advisor to the Chair of Women's College Hospital
Advisor to the Minister and DM for Health for PEI - Health Strategy, the Development of a Telehealth Strategy, Health in the Health System Workplace, Early Childhood Support Programming
Advisor to the ADM's of the Department of Veterans Affairs - Healthy Workplace Strategy, Seniors Strategy for Canada,
VP HR QEII Hospital Halifax NS - HR Strategy
Outreach Advisor to the CIAR - Human Health Program

Food Systems and Agriculture Sector
Advisor to the Minister and DM for PEI on the Potato Food System on PEI and in Ukraine working in partnership with a major US multinational
Advisor to the President of Polar Foods on O/D and Marketing issues

Private Sector
Advising Pizza Delight on O/D and on a merger strategy for Mikes
Advising the owners of UFIT on Corporate Development
Founding Chairman of Firestoker - a social software development company

Technology & Community
Advised Industry Canada at the outset of the Web resulting in the "Connecting Canadians Plan and Schoolnet" the first strategic project to connect Canadian Youth in Canada
Co Developed in Firestoker - Sandbox, the pre release version of Firestoker that is used at Pizza Delight and NPR
Rob is a well known blogger ranking in the top 1pct of bloggers in the world

Non Profit Sector
Advisor for O/D and Funding to the ED of CHANCES Family Resource centre which is now the largest NGO in the province
Advisor to the ED Parks Canada on PEI on the paradox of visitors and sustainability
Advising NPR and Public Radio in the US on how to make the transition to the New Media

Professional History
President The Renewal Consulting Group Inc
Senior Advisor Outreach - Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIAR)
SVP HR - CIBC
SVP Marketing - CIBC Investment Bank
VP Strategy Development - CIBC Investment Bank
ED New Issues - CIBC Limited - London
AD New Issues - CIBC Limited
AVP Middle East Wood Gundy - London
Manager Money Markets - Quebec and Atlantic Canada - Wood Gundy Montreal
Field Officer - DeBeers Prospecting - Botswana

Credentials
Canadian Securities Course parts 1 & 2
MA History Oxford