A grade-eleven aptitude test called it in 1990.
I have spent every year since proving it in a new form.
In 1990 a grade-eleven Choices aptitude test told me I should be a systems analyst: take a complex, tangled situation, and design the way through it. I never took the title. I became the function. I used to joke that I still did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. The truth is the opposite. A test knew in 1990, and I have spent every year since proving it in a new form.
The through-line is not a topic. It is an act. Diagnose the mess as it actually is, design a path a person can walk, and get them to the other side with something real to show for it. I found my people the year I walked into the Creative Problem Solving Institute and realized the thing I did had a name and a community around it.
The name of the company said it before I did. Creative Variant comes from creative variation in motor learning, the way a skier finds an original, functional line down terrain that has no rulebook instead of repeating the same fixed movement. That is the whole job. Different problem every time, no fixed playbook, find the line that works.
Under all of it is thirty years of human-factors science, the study of how people and the systems they work with actually interact. Kinesiology, then ergonomics, then human factors, now consolidating under human systems integration. Some of that work reached global companies like Verizon, Shell, Boeing, and Kaiser, delivered through the platforms of the firms I worked for. The rooms were theirs. The work was mine. Alongside it, a business of my own in one form or another since 1996, and a decade teaching first-time business owners how to start, at Cape Breton University, Mashup Lab, Spark Nova Scotia, and St. Francis Xavier.
An MBA in strategic innovation, an MSc in ergonomics and human factors, a Board Certified Professional Ergonomist credential held by fewer than 1,000 people worldwide. Thirty years, dozens of industries, one constant.
A new offer has never been a new me. It is this year's shape of the same constant. Hand me a mess and a clock. That has been the whole job.
Director of Safety Services, Construction Safety Nova Scotia (CSNS)
Leading safety services for the construction industry across Nova Scotia.
constructionsafetyns.caPrincipal Consultant, Creative Variant Inc.
My consulting practice.
Previously: Director, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre, Cape Breton University
Ten years building innovation programming, mentoring founders, teaching Design Thinking, and running the Centre that connected the university to the startup ecosystem. That work continues through ongoing client relationships with universities like StFX.