Community of Practice

Alex Ryan

Alex Ryan is Vice President Systems Innovation and Director of the MaRS Solutions Lab, which applies systemic design to society’s most complex challenges. He is an Executive-in-Residence at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Alex Ryan is Co-Founder of Synthetikos Inc. Alex Ryan also Co-Founded Alberta CoLab, where he advised a cross-ministry systemic design and strategic foresight team working to institutionalize systems thinking, design and foresight within government policy and planning processes. The CoLab team addresses diverse issues such as energy transition, integrated resource management, stakeholder engagement, and social innovation.   As a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, Alex Ryan has previously taught operational and strategic design at the U.S. School of Advanced Military Studies, and helped to institutionalize design within Western militaries, working with clients such as U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Australian Special Operations Command, and the Canadian Forces College. He is Co-Founder of the Systemic Design Research Network and Co-Chair of the Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium (http://systemic-design.net). His dissertation in applied mathematics advanced a multidisciplinary approach to complex systems design.