How I got into foresight

My first exposure to foresight was waaaaaay back in elementary school. I took a test and someone thought I was ‘gifted’. Thus, every week we were trucked to a different building for a few hours and did some cool stuff, among which was Future Problem Solving, an international competition where kids follow a scripted process to generate creative solutions to future scenarios. We did this all the way through early high school

Flash forward a few years, and I get my first teaching job. A few years in, I get the itch to do something different. Coincidentally, two things happened. First, I started coaching FPS at my high school, rekindling my interest in the field. Second, I was also directing a series of summer STEM workshops for my district. One of the experiences we gave the kids was to visit a futurist lab for EDS. One of the staff was part of the foundation supporting the district workshops, and in our conversations he told me about the foresight program at the University of Houston. So, I gave them a call. What was initially a conversation about how to improve my FPS team turned into me looking at the Master’s program. I took one course and was hooked.

So, I took a year off from teaching, moved to Houston, and completed the program in a little over a year. I completed my internship at the Institute for Alternative Futures. However, it was 2007, and the Great Recession put a damper on my plans to carve out a career in foresight. Back to the classroom I went…

I ended up pursuing a doctorate in instructional technology and, upon completion, became a professor teaching educational technology. This field is inherently foresight-oriented, and I would occasionally dabble in futures projects. Right before the pandemic I shifted back into K-12 doing ed tech consulting, and in 2022, the stars aligned and I ended up back where I started teaching chemistry in the district where I got my start.

Currently, I am a full member of the Association of Professional Futurists. I continue to publish and present in the areas of educational technology and foresight when the opportunities become available, and I am looking to expand my foresight practice to make the world – and more specifically, Michigan and the Great Lakes Region – a better place.

Here’s a link to my most current CV (updated 06/23).