About

I’m 28, 6′0″, Taurus, I like long walks on the beach, spontaneous people…

OK, seriously now.

I grew up on Vancouver’s North Shore, moving from building forts in the woods during childhood to jumping off cliffs on a mountain bike and snowboard during my teens. I decided to try engineering, spending about 5 years studying Metals and Materials Engineering at UBC. It was during this time that I started to suspect that engineering should be about more than efficiency and profitability, and I urged my profs to include more content on social and environmental issues. It was also at this point that I found Engineers Without Borders, an impassioned group of people who convinced me that, with the right consideration, technology could play a massively positive role in addressing some of the worlds toughest challenges.

After graduating, I took an internship with EWB and partner organization EnterpriseWorks, developing mostly potable water technologies in Southern Senegal (where some of the clips in the main video come from). We managed to launch a project that by it’s end, had resulted in over 100 rope pumps and dozens of tube wells installed. But the most beautiful aspect of the program (and one of EnterpriseWorks’ core strategies) was that no pumps were given away - all were made by local fabricators and sold at market rates, ensuring that everyone along the chain benefit ted. A unique, profit-based approach to designing a great project.  During this work I discovered a passion in photography, which has since served as both a tool to communicate development challenges and an artistic outlet.

Work with EWB continued after my return, including helping to organize a National Conference, set up a Professional Chapter and take a role on the Board of Directors. At the same time I found a fantastic civil engineering consultancy, Halsall, and started to work as a ‘real’ engineer. Halsall is full of young, engaging engineers, who care about and promote sustainability, so it was a good fit. Plus, they’re fond of surfing and snowboarding, which certainly helped suck me in. However, I decided after two and a half years that I would not be able to have as much impact in shaping my world as I expected of myself, purely as an engineer.

This triggered a move back to school, to do a Masters in Engineering for Sustainable Development at Cambridge. The course has exposed me to a new depth of understanding many of our challenges in promoting solutions that address environmental and social, as well as economic factors. It has also provided access to the business side of the equation, which I quickly jumped at. And it has become clear, very quickly to me, that it is by using tools provided by business to address social challenges, that I will be able to have the most impact. Thus the desire to do an MBA, with a specific focus in social entrepreneurship: Oxford’s Said Business School.

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