As VP of systems innovation and the program director of the MaRS Solutions Lab, Alex Ryan brings diverse groups of people together to jointly innovate on some of society’s most complex challenges. Alex co-founded the innovation and collaboration agency Synthetikos Inc., co-founded Alberta CoLab, the first provincial government innovation lab in Canada, and also co-founded the Systemic Design Research Network. He is an executive-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he developed a new course called "Designing in a Whitewater World." Alex's dissertation in applied mathematics advanced a multidisciplinary approach to complex systems design. As a consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, he previously helped introduce operational and strategic design into the US Army. He serves on several boards, including the Privy Council Office’s Innovation Hub Advisory Committee for the Government of Canada.