Ric Young - "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series
The SiG@Waterloo "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series, applied the ideas of social innovation to a number of specific sectors and issues - education, youth mentorship, inclusion, collaboration and cultural change. Each of the keynote speakers shared their experiences of operating at the national level to identify and address the root causes of intractable social challenges. Each keynote lecture was followed by a local panel discussion who shared their reflections on the presentation and offered insight into their own experiences.
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Frances Westley introduces Ric Young
Ric Young's Main Presentation
The Panel
Biographies
Frances Westley introduces Ric Young
On May 5th, 2010 SiG@Waterloo invited Ric Young to speak to an audience at the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum in downtown Kitchener. Ric has an extensive background in social marketing and is considered a pioneer in the field. Ric spoke about the recognition that society has "developed exceptional ingenuities, proficiencies, organizations and systems for change" and that we must harness these exceptionalities and apply it to social change initiatives. Ric highlighted various real-world examples of large-scale, social change initiatives throughout the world and addressed some fundamental questions about their impact on society and their ability to create sustainable, positive changes on society.
Frances' Bio
Frances' Bio
"We are living at a point in history when the need and desire for change is profound...It is a pivotal time. Over the past two hundred years, human society has developed exceptional ingenuities, proficiencies, organizations and systems for the task of making things--from steam engines to microchips. Going forward, we must learn to be equally adept at the task of making change. It's an essential modern competency."
- Eric Young, From the forward of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
Eric Young
President, E.Y.E. | The Social Projects Studio™
Eric (Ric) Young was a pioneer in the field of social marketing. He cut his teeth on the early stages of the PARTICIPaction campaign, and was co-founder of Canada’s first dedicated social marketing agency. He left that company in the mid-90s to start E.Y.E. | The Social Projects Studio™ – a company dedicated to the creation and development of breakthrough social change initiatives. Working with leading government, corporate and not-for-profit clients, he became increasingly frustrated by the inadequacy of the tools, models and methods society has at hand for tackling our most complex problems. This led him, in the year 2000, to propose to DuPont Canada that they embark on an initiative “to foster new mindsets, new skill sets, and a new culture for social innovation in Canada”. He worked with DuPont over several years to develop the Social Innovation Initiative, eventually forging a partnership with McGill University to create one of the world’s first social innovation think tanks. This think tank gave rise to the best-selling book, Getting To Maybe. He is on the faculty of the Boston College Centre for Corporate Citizenship. His current voluntary roles include: membership on the board of Ecotrust Canada, the Canadian advisory board of Right To Play and the editorial board of the Social Marketing Quarterly. He is a fellow of The Royal Society of the Arts, a member of Massey College’s Quadrangle Society, and a fellow of SiG (Social Innovation Generation) at the University of Waterloo.
Paul Born
Paul directs Tamarack – An Institute for Community Engagement. Tamarack is Waterloo based and a world-renowned organisation working to advance place-based solutions to entrenched problems like poverty. Before Tamarack, Paul was at the forefront of community economic development in Canada and founded Opportunities 2000 – the Waterloo Region campaign to reduce poverty to the lowest levels in Canada.
Ramy Nassar
Ramy is a Waterloo based business and social entrepreneur. He works in sales and business development in the wireless industry, has a number of his own startup projects and offers business development advice/consulting to several local, early-stage tech startups. He is also involved with Engineers Without Borders Canada and helped launch Ignite Waterloo and TEDxWaterloo – two highly successful forums for sharing ideas and knowledge amongst the Waterloo community.
Tracey Robertson
Tracey has 25 years experience in system change processes, strategic philanthropy locally and nationally, and community development in the voluntary and public sectors. She is the Regional Program Manager for the Ontario Trillium Foundation, has worked with partners across all sectors and is currently on secondment to take on a role as part of Community Innovations, a 6 month pilot focused on fostering a culture of innovation and bringing a system perspective to connect broader innovations and facilitate synergies across the community sector in Waterloo Region.
Lee Smolin
In addition to his significant contributions to theoretical physics, Lee is the author of three popular books in which he wrestles with the philosophical implications of what contemporary physics has shown us to be true. He asks as we come to understand more about how the world works, how will our worldview change? Lee moved to Waterloo in 2001 as a founding member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Today, Perimeter Institute stands as an innovative and successful example of public-private partnerships in scientific research and educational outreach.
Facilitator: Frances Westley
Frances Westley joined the University of Waterloo as the JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation in July 2007. In this capacity she is one of the principle leads in a Canada wide initiative in social innovation, SiG (Social Innovation Generation), a cross sectoral partnership to build capacity for social innovation in Canada funded by the J.W McConnell Family Foundation, University of Waterloo and the Ontario government. At University of Waterloo she leads a research team dedicated to understanding social innovation, and has designed both graduate and undergraduate curricula in social innovation.
Dr. Westley is a renowned scholar and consultant in the areas of social innovation, strategies for sustainable development, strategic change, visionary leadership and inter-organizational collaboration. Her most recent book, Getting to Maybe (Random House, 2006) focuses the dynamics of social innovation, and institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems. Experiments in Consilience (Island Press, 2004), focuses on the dynamics of inter-organizational and interdisciplinary collaboration in the management of ecological and conservation problems.
Before joining the University of Waterloo, Frances Westley held the position of Director, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (2005-2007) at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Other positions she has previously held include the James McGill Professor of Strategy at McGill University’s Faculty of Management, director of the McGill-Dupont Initiative on Social Innovation and director of the McGill-McConnell Masters program for National Voluntary Sector leaders – an innovative executive masters customized for the leaders of voluntary organizations across Canada.
Frances Westley serves on numerous advisory boards including Resilience Alliance Board of Science, , World Conservation Union-Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, , the Stockholm Resilience Center, the SARAS Institute and Evergreen Canada. She is on the editorial board of several journals, including Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Ecology and Society. She is the recipient of several awards including the Ulysses S. Seal award for innovation in conservation, and the Corporate Knights Award.