West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
For five decades my work has lived in the divides between people and resources — the cracks where major projects succeed or fail. Today my focus is on sharing that body of knowledge in new ways: keynotes, leadership retreats, board discussions, executive sessions.Judgement into pragmatics with real cases to help leaders navigate complexity and make better decisions. What I offer is perspective — a strategic lens shaped by work across oil and gas, mining, forestry, energy, fisheries, transportation, environmental stewardship, Indigenous relations, and public policy. I have worked with corporations, governments, Indigenous nations, communities, and regulators — and inside organizations, across business units, generations, and internal cultures where alignment is often hardest to achieve. Over time I found myself in a position few people ever occupy — not above the work or outside it, but in the middle of it, in the cracks where values and interests, rights and power, culture and history meet. As Leonard Cohen reminds us, it’s also where the light gets in. That vantage point gave me a way of seeing difficult to acquire any other way: a clear line-of-sight across organizations, cultures, generations, and the many worlds that converge around major projects. Appointed Member of the Order of Canada — cited as a social innovator whose work has spanned residential schools, fisheries management, environmental stewardship,& the resolution of complex multilateral disputes, & relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. A few perspectives inform everything I share: People act on perceived self-interest, not actual self-interest. The ostensible problem is almost never the real problem. Organizational charts don’t tell the whole story. Internal cracks become external crises. Relationships are assets. Building and resolving are the same work. I pedal optimism. Not because I am naïve — fifty years in difficult situations cures you of that — but because I have never encountered a situation where a path forward did not exist once people were prepared to see it. Recent work: Supporting NWMO on its siting approach. Aligning internal and external decision-making for major resource companies. Designing an adaptive management structure for the Pilotage Authority (2025–26). Co-creating a 12-part podcast series, Troubles to Transformation. Presenting at the World Mining Congress in Lima. Member of the Order of Canada. King’s Counsel. Honorary Consul General of Iceland in British Columbia. Founding Principal, GEMM.ca. Chair Emeritus, RESOLVE NGO. www.glennsigurdson.com
CSE GROUP - A professional affiliation of independent practitioners known as The CSE Group, who are widely recognized as leaders within the field and its development, including Glenn Sigurdson, Gerald W. Cormick , Barry Stuart (barrystuart.ca) Felicity Edwards ( recently deceased) and Jessica Bratty of Confluence Solutions http://ca.linkedin.com/in/jessicabratty