Bruce Simpson is a Senior Partner of McKinsey where he has worked for 32 years in New York, Paris, and now Canada since 2000. Bruce serves leading institutions in the aerospace, industrial and public sectors. He led McKinsey’s Canadian practice for eight years, then convened McKinsey’s global operations practice, scaling up client service in manufacturing, service operations, capital projects, product development, procurement and supply chain. He also served on McKinsey’s global board for 12 years, the senior body governing McKinsey worldwide.
He now leads a global initiative to accelerate innovation across McKinsey, and its clients. This includes a venture capital approach to identify, fund, incubate and scale new ideas and start-ups, leveraging McKinsey’s business building skills, and access to leading companies to help them scale up rapidly. The effort also seeks promising disruptive technologies outside the firm, builds applications for McKinsey clients, and supports clients seeking to increase the pace of their innovation.
He also helps clients build strategies for long-term success, that integrate across economic, social and environmental impact from the standpoint of a broad base of stakeholders. Bruce co-authored a chapter in the new book Reimagining Capitalism on this topic in 2016. He also helps companies integrate social impact and noble purpose into their strategies and improve their efforts on corporate social responsibility.
Bruce works with many clients in the manufacturing sector and helps resolve a range of topics. His Canadian client work includes modernizing older industrial companies, building new ones, and working extensively on making multi-stakeholder public-private partnerships work effectively.
Bruce is a member of the Business Council of Canada and an advocate for Canadian competitiveness globally. Recent articles and speeches include: Growing Canada’s GDP, Public and Private Sector Productivity Gaps, Education to Employment Gaps, Business in Society, Canada/Japan, and Canada/China Business Relationships, Canada in the Pacific Century, and 21st Century Leadership. He is very active in the community on issues of healthcare, women’s advancement, CSR, and human rights. He serves on the boards of Catalyst, the Trans Canada Trail, and the global board of Human Rights Watch.
He holds two law degrees from Cambridge University and an MBA/MA in international studies from Wharton Business School and the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bruce was awarded a Churchill Medallion by Her Majesty the Queen for exploration in China, was a professional ski racer, and is a keen sea kayaker in the arctic. He and his wife Tracy have three sons.
An advisor to federal and provincial policymakers, Dr. Herb Emery focuses his research on the development of the Canadian economy and the persistence of long-standing regional disparities. Aside from understanding the economic fundamentals of growth in a small open economy, Dr. Emery’s work incorporates political, historical, cultural and other institutional factors that have shaped Canadian development processes.
Dr. Emery holds the Vaughan Chair in Regional Economics at UNB. His impact, since coming to UNB in July 2016, has been substantial. He has become an acknowledged and widely consulted opinion leader in industry, media and government circles. He holds an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of British Columbia. His academic career began at the University of Calgary where, from 1993 to 2016, he established a track record of excellence in research, teaching and leadership.
At the University of Calgary, Dr. Emery served as professor of economics and as research director of the School of Public Policy. He also held the position of Svare Professor in Health Economics, a joint position in the department of community health science in the faculty of medicine at the department of economics. From 2010 to 2015, he served as managing editor of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de politiques, Canada’s foremost journal examining economic and social policy.
Andrew Sharpe is the founder and executive director of the Ottawa-based Centre for the Study of Living Standards (CSLS). Established in 1995, CSLS is a national, independent, non-profit research organization whose main objective is to study trends and determinants of productivity, living standards and economic well-being. CSLS also develops policy recommendations to improve the lives of Canadians.
Dr. Sharpe has held a variety of earlier positions, including Head of Research at the Canadian Labour Market and Productivity Centre and Chief, Business Sector Analysis at Finance Canada.
Dr. Sharpe holds an MA and PhD in economics from McGill University, a maitrise in urban geography from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne, and a BA from the University of Toronto. He has taught at Champlain College (Lennoxville Campus), Université de Sherbrooke, McGill University, and in the graduate economics program at the University of Ottawa.
He is founder and Editor since 2000 of the International Productivity Monitor and founder/co-developer (with Lars Osberg) of the Index of Economic Well-being, a composite index of well-being based on consumption flows, stocks of wealth, equality, and economic security developed in the late 1990s that is well-known throughout the world. Dr. Sharpe is also a consultant to the World Bank on labor market issues and Executive Director of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth (IARIW), an international research association dedicated to the advancement of knowledge relating to income and wealth.
