Trevor Maber

Brainstormer, Business adviser, Business leader, Business mentor, Care taker, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Consultant, Educator/Teacher, Idea generator, Life mentor, Policy maker, Project manager, Public servant, Startup

An award-winning faculty member at the Edwards School of Business (University of Saskatchewan, Canada), and associate faculty member in the Schools of Leadership Studies at both Royal Roads University (Victoria, BC) and Fielding Graduate University (Santa Barbara, CA), Dr. Trevor Maber engages in teaching, research, and applied consulting practice across a wide range of practice areas including culture, change, leadership, human resources, organizational behavior & development, large group facilitation processes, presentation skills and case analysis. Previously the Director of People Strategies with Saskatchewan Polytechnic and a senior project manager with the Saskatchewan Health Authority, he leverages over 25 years of experience to create positive change and highly-engaging learning opportunities for the students, clients and organizations he works with. He partners with leading Canadian and US-based consulting groups while entertaining speaking and conference engagements across North America and internationally, and is the COO with Pure Strategy Inc., a Toronto-based technology firm focused on the ethical application of AI and unsupervised machine learning to data analytics. Trevor is a Fellow with the Fielding Institute for Social Innovation (ISI), focusing his action research projects on how high-leverage social technologies (not the online kind!) and facilitation approaches can better serve diverse groups, organizations and communities as they respond to increasingly complex problems and possibilities. He has also been an active contributor and supporter within the TED community for over a 15 years as a TED workshop presenter and host, TEDx organizer and speaker, and TED-ED lesson designer and educator. Trevor holds his PhD from Fielding Graduate University with a focus on organizational development and change, along with his MA in Human and Organizational Systems from Fielding, MA in Leadership and Training from Royal Roads University, and BComm from the University of Saskatchewan, along with numerous coaching, facilitation and assessment certifications.

Connecting people and ideas any chance I get... the more bridges we build, the better prepared we are for an unknown future filled with both crucial challenges and promising possibilities.

Margaret Wheatley once offered that “It’s not our differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do”. Our world is more connected and we are more accessible than ever before, and yet we’ve never been more isolated and divided... how we communicate and interact has become incredibly transactional and fleeting, one tweet and then the next... the more likes the better... one snap after another. Everyone, everywhere is craving and longing for the deep connections and moments that remind us of our collective humanity. We need to return to relating in and through community, holding the space for each other and the conversations that matter most right now, rediscovering the strength and synergy of the diversity that has always existed both between and within us.

Appreciative Inquiry, Employee Engagement, Human Resources, leadership development, Project Management, Relational Intelligence, World Cafe

Three set of childhood imprints have stuck with me: being a hacker (the good kind!) of all things -- starting with Lego and then moving on to tinkering with anything I could (and was allowed!) to get my hands on... all toward understanding how (and more importantly, why) things worked the way they do... or don't, and how they could be improved. Many a clock radio, VCR and bicycle succumbed to my meddling ways, all in the name of my endless mad science experiments -- and the chagrin of my parents and others! Growing up in the pre-interweb 80's also meant the wild west of BBSing, CompuServe and BASIC... ahh the good ol' days, and a hacker's paradise! Books and movies also introduced me to another obsession: the heros journey, but not the solitary toiling in obscurity... rather the trials and tribulations of a team, the triumphs of a cohesive group, a collective making a positive difference in the world. Alongside that, growing up with a dad who was a doctor and mom who was a nurse, leveraging the power of compassion toward helping others be better (physically and otherwise) has become a central theme of my life and work. That foundation of curiosity, collaboration and compassion led me to spend the first 15 years of my career in health care and then post-secondary education focusing on human resources in roles ranging from front-line through management to senior leadership, and ultimately landing in the space of hacking the systems that are organizations. As an organizational development consultant and leadership adviser, I'm both fascinated and perplexed by how too many workplaces are 'broken' -- and why, despite the best of intention and effort -- people often struggle in deepening desperation to do good work, achieve a sense of contribution and find a healthy and happy balance. For the past decade, my focus has shifted 'upstream' (hacking education!) as a faculty member at the University of Saskatchewan B-school, teaching across areas including training & organizational development, leadership, HR, facilitation and international business strategy, along with my role as COO of Pure Strategy Inc., an AI/ML-centric tech startup looking to reshape the realm of data analytics. Building on my dissertation research and related projects and change initiatives, my attention and intention is shifting toward a fourth act: hacking humanity. In today's always on and constantly connected world, we're regrettably (and ironically) finding ourselves more distant, divided and even desperate than ever before. Combined with the rapidly evolving future of work, the time has come to hack our ourselves... not in terms of gadgets and the latest better life tech, but toward the social technologies and values -- some new, but mostly old and even ancient, part of our DNA and our inherent being -- that will be fundamental to successfully navigating what lies ahead. Countless conversations continue to confirm my suspicion that we need to reclaim that part of us -- the collective that IS us -- which is quickly becoming forgotten, overshadowed and overwhelmed by everything (and everyone) being an instantaneous click away. Toward this, a worldwide community of scholars and practitioners are convening around one of the most pivotal projects of our time, working to uncover and rediscover the ways and means for our collective society to find its best path forward. Stay tuned... and please do consider joining in! All of this brings me to finding a place within TED - the hub of a global web dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading. As a teacher, thinker, writer, speaker and most of all learner, TED plays a significant role, in countless ways, in my work and life. Whether in organizations, classrooms or speaking to audiences, the philosophy and energy of this community is always close in mind and heart for me, as it is (or will be!) for many of you. To that end, please do take a look at the efforts of TED-ED (ed.ted.com) and the hundreds of Lessons Worth Sharing, including my lesson on 'Rethinking Thinking'... comments and feedback always welcome!

Paddleboarding (...keep in mind I live in the middle of the Canadian prairies!)