Eighteen years designing and delivering programs that change how people work. Since 2019, focused on AI. The through-line is the same: take something people find abstract or threatening and turn it into something they can do on Monday.
The Work
AI Programs
AI Accelerator — AI for Arts & Culture Leaders 2024–2025
A year-long national AI capability program funded by the Canada Council with workshops in six provinces. The flagship ran fifteen weeks with weekly online sessions plus a four-day intensive in Toronto. Total workshops (short, day-long and intensive) saw over 500 participants. Curriculum later adapted into print and a video course.
Case study (PDF)
Art Impact 2019–2020
A national consultation on AI. Thirteen workshops in every province and territory, 207 participants, co-produced with UKAI Projects and the AI Impact Alliance. Eight strategic recommendations on AI governance, published by AI Impact Alliance. CBC and Global TV coverage.
Practical governance which includes plain rules about what's allowed, set early. Ambiguity stalls adoption more reliably than caution does.
Case study (PDF) · Video Testimonial
Please Don't Understand This 2021–2022 · Dzaleka, Beijing, Cairo
Most ethical frameworks for AI come out of Western intellectual traditions. Communities in a Malawian refugee camp, a Beijing hutong and a Cairo design studio built their own symbolic languages for describing algorithmic systems. A project about who governs AI, and in whose terms.
Algorithmic Culture Series · Goethe-Institut Toronto · 2020–2021
A public program on AI ethics developed across Toronto and Berlin for technologists, ethicists and audiences with no technical background. Commissioned publications, workshops, and a speculative documentary podcast.
Framing essay, Goethe-Institut · Video (The Computer is Your Redacted)
Ferment AI 2021–2022
A twelve-month prototyping residency for nine practitioners working with AI, hosted at the Ingenuity Labs Research Institute at Queen's University, with an exchange in Berlin.
Corporate and Public Sector
Eleven years at the Banff Centre — Program Manager, then Program Director, then Faculty — across more than a hundred leadership, innovation and change-management programs.
Designed and delivered: TransAlta · SMART Technologies · Alberta Blue Cross · Alberta Innovates · Saskatchewan Public Service Commission · Canadian Society for Training and Development · Beakerhead · C2MTL
Commissioned: Travel Alberta — workshops in Chicago and Calgary to drive conference business to the province. Calgary Flames — a full-organisation team day.
Managed: customized leadership programs for WorleyParsons and ATB Financial.
Suncor Energy — a sustained open-enrolment relationship, and later a designed encounter for the Suncor Foundation leadership team.
A national consultation on leadership in the creative sector — ten round tables across Canada. The Peter Lougheed Leadership Initiative, with the University of Alberta and the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell. The Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leaders Lab, two year-long cohorts. A key role in securing more than $30M in public and private commitments.
Curriculum and Instructional Design
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity · Peter Lougheed Leadership Initiative (University of Alberta) · Alberta University of the Arts · School for Social Entrepreneurs - Ontario · Department of Utopian Arts and Letters · Artscape Daniels Launchpad · UKAI Projects
Artscape Daniels Launchpad 2017–2018
The full curriculum for a new 30,000 sq. ft. entrepreneurship facility on the Toronto waterfront: a forty-hour core plus a laddered series of one-day sessions matched to venture stage. 500+ participants annually, including a sustained partnership with Shopify.
Applied AI
Custom RAG pipelines, voice model training and fine-tuning, LLM prompting and evaluation, multi-model orchestration. I scope and build alongside technical collaborators.
We Play in the World 2025
Four distinct AI models running in parallel inside a live escape-room format for public audiences.
Restoring Cosmic Order 2024–2025 · Reykjavík, Montreal
A language model paired with an autonomous mobile unit, deployed unattended in public exhibition.
AI Ritual 2022–2023 · Berlin, Edinburgh
A live production driven by a large language model trained in-house. Premiered at Spy on Me, Hebbel am Ufer.
MUTEK Forum 2023
Delivered From Text to Sound: Building Multi-Modal AI Agents, programmed alongside the AI Now Institute, Mila and Amazon Alexa.
Presenting MUTEK 2023 - From Text to Sound: Building Multi-Modal AI Agents, Montreal, PQ, photo: Maryse Boyce
Restoring Cosmic Order 2024 - Shipwreck, Reykjavik, Iceland, photo: Kristen Ferguson
AI Ritual 2022 - Hebbel am ufer, Berlin, Germany, photo: David Irvine
Speaking and Publications
MUTEK Forum · BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network, Mérida · University of Toronto, Faculty of Music · University of the Arts London · Goethe-Institut · World MakerFaire, New York
Springer, 2019 · Edward Elgar, 2020 · Quartz, 2018, most-read article of the year · Toyota Foundation JOINT, Japanese and English editions
If any of this is close to something you're working on, I'd be glad to talk.