John M Schmidt Email & Phone Number

John is a Synthesist (paper available), focusing on areas related primarily to foresight, strategic intelligence, strategic planning, risk analysis and management, synthesis, organizational development, and terrorist resourcing. He is the founder of CANSYNTH, originally in Ottawa, Canada, but now in Canberra, Australia. He currently engages with organizations, especially government departments and agencies, on the uncertainty and complexity in today’s risk analysis and decision-making environments, and the need for a formal foresight function and processes to complement other information and analysis processes supporting policy and planning. He promotes a low-cost, high-return model for implementing such a function within individual organizations and communities of organizations, especially governments, the financial sector and other critical infrastructures.John also presents and teaches on several of the topics he covers.John has established the LinkedIn group, Synthesists Global, and invites anyone who considers themself to be a synthesist or is interested in learning more about synthesis as a discipline is invited to join and contribute to the group - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13666933/.John “retired” from FINTRAC (Canada’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing financial intelligence unit (FIU)) in 2015, having been theresince its establishment in 2000. While there, he filled a number of roles, first as Manager, Planning, wherein he led the organization through the development of its first strategic plan, then as part of a small team developing and operating FINTRAC’s strategic intelligence function. He was also instrumental in the development and initial delivery of a strategic analysis course for analysts from across the Egmont Group of FIUs.Between 2006 and 2011, John was seconded to the Integrated Threat (now Terrorism) Assessment Centre (ITAC), where, among other things, he produced a number of products related to threats to critical infrastructure, and a major study and model of terrorist resourcing. Upon returning to FINTRAC, John became Team Leader of FINTRAC’s Strategic Research and Analysis function, responsible for strategic and policy-relevant analysis, focusing on financial intelligence.

Listed skills include Synthesis, Strategic Thinking, Government, Policy, and 23 others.