Steve Waddell

Steve focuses upon diverse issues and opportunities requiring large systems change. The issues may be as broad as issues of trade, poverty and sustainable development, or as specific as road-building, youth employment, banking and provision of water and sanitation services. Usually the change strategy involves creating business-government-civil society collaborations and networks; these collaborations may be local, national or global.

Steve has gained his experience working as a practitioner, a researcher, teacher and consultant. In the 1980s Steve had practitioner leadership roles in the Canadian labor movement and the credit union system, where among other accomplishments he co-founded what is now Canada’s largest family of socially responsible mutual funds. More recently he founded the Global Action Network Net which is a leading center for creating deep change globally through networks.

Research and consulting clients have included foundations and agencies such as the Ford, International Youth and MacArthur Foundations, the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development. Sometimes Steve works with business-government and civil society collaborations such as the Global Reporting Initiative, the Dialogue on Water and Climate, The Access Initiative and the Youth Employment Summit; for non-governmental organizations such as the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development and Mvula Trust; and with government such as the Government of Canada and the State of Massachusetts.

Steve is a faculty member of an innovative work-based executive management program he founded at Boston College, and he teaches in his role as an Associate of the Center for Innovation in Management at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is a Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute.

Dozens of journal articles and book chapters by Steve have been published in English and Spanish. He has a forthcoming book titled Beyond Corporate Citizenship and Social Responsibility: Societal Learning and Change. Steve has a doctorate in sociology and an MBA.