I have a passion for systems that manage information and thereby create the environment needed for collaborative action.

I began life exploring systems, as we all do. I was drawn toward the sea and started off in the field of Marine Biology. Complex biological systems are instructive because they are continually changing as they react, adapt and evolve. From subcellular chemistry to multispecies systems, rules that control both standardization and specialization are continually being discovered and reapplied in artful ways. I contributed to this quest as a bench scientist and group leader in a string of life science and biomedical companies. With the rising tide of complexity in this business, and with training from the Management of Technology Program at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, I moved from the bench to the board room. I launched, ran, and then transferred an international biomedical device company - and in the process I discovered some information management tools that I still use today. My more recent years have been spent working in support of sustainable regional economic development through government-university-industry partnerships.

My primary interest is in applied systems science, and I am honored and humbled by the great minds that come together to advance this field. All modern business systems and communities are organic systems which are driven by information. The fusion of life science thinking with other forms of systems thinking finds a rich field of application in this area of business management.

I am also still a technologist, of sorts. I am an advocate of sociotechnology needed to sustain and advance the efficiency and effectiveness of sharing wisdom. We have powerful tools within our very reach that remain largely untouched only because they are unfamiliar to us. My mission in education is to provide opportunities for current and future business and community leaders to see the power of advanced sociotechnologies in action.