Dr. Brad Stelfox Awarded the 2020 CE Analytic Mastermind Award

The CE Analytic Mastermind Award is given to an individual or group who is(are) planning and implementing an ingenious and possibly complex project, activity or enterprise that is bringing about positive change.  Think of it as a big idea born and implemented.

The recipient of the 2020 CE Analytic Mastermind Award was already working on one of the world’s biggest systems challenges - how to shape human land use for sustainability - way back in the early 1990’s.  He was trying to figure out how humans could shape their land use activities to more sustainable trajectories.  As a systems thinker, he experienced first-hand the difficult challenge of sifting through and distilling a massive amount of data, permutations, combinations and probabilities.  There had to be a better way to do the mathematical heavy-lifting needed.

I first met Dr. Brad Stelfox in the year 2000 when I was a delegate at a United Nations Sustainability Conference in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada.  I listened intently from the audience as he talked about a computer system that could add it all up.  As he explained the concepts on stage I was painting a picture in my mind of my own work and our struggle to deal with the complexity of planning just one land use sector - forestry, while still making sure everything else would be OK.  Y’know, the animals, the plants, the water, the fish, the viewscapes – the biodiversity.  It’s so complicated!

Brad established Forem Technologies and the ALCES Group in 1995 and is the architect and developer of the ALCES model. ALCES is an acronym for “A Landscape Cumulative Effects Simulator” and is also the latin genus and species of another of his research passions.

Brad has long been one of the world’s best systems dynamicists.  While he teaches through the Universities of Alberta and Calgary, Brad’s powerful presentations to hundreds of multi-stakeholder groups, communities, governments, policy makers and corporate leaders on several continents and his TEDx Talk have motivated thousands to keep working for a better balance of the triple bottom line.  He has been an exceptionally generous mentor to me for which I will always be so grateful.

Brad is a true MasterMind.  He had the ingenuity to imagine a time machine that would help us travel from time immemorial to the present and out into the future.  He had the determination and sheer will to build, re-imagine, rebuild, improve, and use that time machine to help all of us better understand the cumulative effects of multiple overlapping human land uses and natural disturbance.  What he has given the world is not just a contribution - but a legacy that many others are and will use to continue our journey towards sustainability.  Dr. Brad Stelfox is the 2020 CE Analytic MasterMind Award Recipient.

Carol Anne Hilton was the 2019 CE Analytic Mastermind Award Recipient - read more here: https://www.barryjwilson.com/blog/cfx-conference-2019-awards