Alex Ryan

Alex Ryan is VP of Systems Innovation and Program Director of the MaRS Solutions Lab. He most enjoys spending time with his wife Eleanor, and bringing diverse groups of participants together to jointly innovate on society’s most complex and important challenges. Alex Ryan is co-founder of the innovation and collaboration agency Synthetikos Inc. and also co-founded Alberta CoLab, the first provincial government innovation lab in Canada. He is an executive-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he developed a new course: Designing in a Whitewater World. As a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, Alex Ryan previously helped introduce operational and strategic design into the U.S. Army. He is co-founder of the Systemic Design Research Network and serves on several boards, including the Privy Council Office’s Innovation Hub Advisory Committee for the Government of Canada. His dissertation in applied mathematics advanced a multidisciplinary approach to complex systems design.