Michael Adams – Career Resume
Michael Adams was born in Walkerton, Ontario on September 29, 1946. Born to William and Florentine Adams, a carpenter and a nurse respectively, Michael relied on scholarships and student loans to pursue an undergraduate degree in political science at Queen’s University. He went on to complete a Master’s degree in Sociology at the University of Toronto.
Over the past forty plus years Michael has built a remarkable career, one marked by success in business but even more notably by his dedication and achievements as one of the country’s leading social thinkers and writers. Michael, more than anyone else over this period, has through his research, publications and public speaking, contributed to helping Canadians understand who they are as a country and a people.
Professional Career
Environics Research Group. While still a graduate student, Michael co-founded the Environics Research Group in 1970. Over the ensuing four and a half decades, Environics has become one of the most respected public opinion and market research firms in Canada. Today, the Environics Group of Companies has nearly two hundred employees with offices in six cities in Canada and the United States. In 2006, Marketing Magazine named Michael Adams one of the hundred most influential marketing and communications professionals in Canada. In 2008 Michael became a Fellow of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA), the highest honour his industry’s professional association can bestow on a member.
Public Interest Research. Stretching beyond his role as a business leader, Michael pioneered the application of survey research to serve a broader purpose of public discourse about the country and its future.
In 1983, Michael launched an innovative new polling program at the Globe and Mail, the first of its kind in Canada. Canadians now take for granted that media outlets partner with pollsters to help them understand and explain Canadian public opinion, but in 1983 this model was novel; it has since been replicated countless times in all arms of the media. Unlike most of today’s media polling, the Environics-Globe and Mail program focused on substantive issues of policy rather than political horse race numbers.
Michael’s interest in the nature and quality of the national conversation was also evident in 1996 when he convened the Scenarios for the Future project. Scenarios for the Future brought together over thirty leaders, strategists, and thinkers from a variety of backgrounds and political persuasions to consider Canada’s future, and remedy what they saw as a dearth of strategic planning for the country. Stepping outside the welter of quotidian planning and politics, Scenarios for the Future offered an important venue in which some of Canada’s most engaged citizens could think deeply about its future.
Wishing for students, academics, and the general public to have greater access to public opinion data, Michael was instrumental in expanding the Canadian Opinion Research Archive (CORA) at Queen’s University. As a public service, CORA makes publicly available to students and journalists the country’s most extensive archive of Canadian survey research data, along with general information about polling and public opinion research. Michael has also funded scholarships for students of the Queen’s School of Policy Studies who are pursuing projects related to Canadian public opinion.
Michael’s passion and dedication to using research for broader public benefit culminated in his founding of the Environics Institute for Survey Research (described below).
Books and publications. Michael is perhaps best known for his six books on social values and social change in Canada:
Sex in the Snow (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1997)
Better Happy Than Rich (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2000)
Fire and Ice (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2003)
American Backlash (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005)
Unlikely Utopia (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2007)
Stayin’ Alive (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2010)
Three of these books became Canadian bestsellers. Fire and Ice won the 2003/4 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy, and was also selected by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the hundred most important books ever published in Canada.
Michael also authored a chapter in The Public Intellectual in Canada (edited by Nelson Wiseman, University of Toronto Press, 2013) in which he writes about the contribution of public opinion research to the kinds of social and policy discussions being advanced by public intellectuals in Canada. The book examines the place and impact of public intellectuals in our rapidly changing and diverse society, with contributions from many of Canada’s leading thinkers including Janice Stein, Hugh Segal, Mark Kingwell, Tom Flanagan, Stephen Clarkson, Pierre Fortin and Margaret Somerville.
Michael has published dozens of articles and commentary pieces in such publications as the Globe and Mail, The Literary Review of Canada, and Policy Options. In all of these pieces (
(http://www.environicsinstitute.org/michael-adams/articles),the focus is on bringing research and intellectually-rigorous thinking to expanding our knowledge and appreciation of Canadian public opinion and social change.
In addition to his publications, Michael is a frequent lecturer and commentator on television and radio, as well as a guest speaker at conferences and seminars.
Through this work, Michael is widely known as a valued public intellectual in this country, and known for writing and speaking in an accessible voice for a broad audience.
Volunteer and Public Service
In addition to the passion for Canada that is evident in his writing and public talks, Michael has demonstrated a deep commitment to his city, serving on the boards of the United Way of Greater Toronto and the Toronto Community Foundation. He has also served on the steering committee of DiverseCity, a collaboration of the Maytree Foundation and the Toronto City Summit Alliance aimed at diversifying Toronto’s leadership landscape.
North Albion Scholarship Program. When Michael noticed that the Rexdale neighbourhood in which he had grown up in the 1960s was one troubled site in Toronto’s infamous “summer of the gun” (2005), he responded by reconnecting with his former high school, North Albion Collegiate. Quiet and homogeneous during Michael’s own youth, North Albion had come to serve many young people facing challenges related to migration, poverty, and marginalization.
That fall, Michael established a scholarship that awards the first year of tuition at any post-secondary institution in Ontario to the North Albion student who writes the best personal essay or story about growing up in Rexdale. The goal of the scholarship is threefold: to give young people in Rexdale a venue in which to express themselves and their experiences; to give other Torontonians a window onto these young people’s experiences; and to provide a unique educational opportunity to a talented young person whose options might otherwise be limited. This annual scholarship will be celebrating its 10 year anniversary in 2015.
In addition to funding a scholarship at his own school, Michael has contributed to and been involved with Pathways to Education, first launched in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood.
Environics Institute for Survey Research
Michael’s longstanding commitment to public interest work culminated in the founding of an innovative non-profit research institute in 2006. Michael established the Environics Institute for Survey Research (www.EnvironicsInstitute.org) to promote relevant public opinion and social research on important issues of public policy and social change in Canada. It is through such research that organizations and individuals can better understand Canada today, how it has been changing, and where it may be heading. A central part of the Institute’s mandate is to survey individuals and groups not usually heard from, asking questions not normally asked.
The Institute pursues this mission by:
1. Sponsoring survey research on issues of public importance which are not being addressed by other organizations (e.g., governments, media, foundations) in Canada and abroad;
2. Proactively disseminating Institute-sponsored research to encourage its use and impact, through media partnerships and by providing access to academic researchers, students, foundations, think tanks, and journalists (all Institute research is in the public domain);
3. Encouraging informed public discourse on issues related to Institute-sponsored research;
4. Promoting the importance and role of survey and social research in public policy and democracy through outreach activities (e.g., publications and public commentary, events, partnerships); and
5. Serving as a centre of excellence for responsible public opinion research methods and application, through education, training and consulting.
The Institute is a private non-profit corporation (wholly separate from the Environics Group of Companies), with an external Board of Directors.
Since its founding in 2006, the Institute has carried out a number of unique and groundbreaking studies focusing on different parts of Canada’s mosaic. Projects include the following:
· The first-ever national Survey of Muslims in Canada (2006), accompanied by a companion study of the country’s non-Muslim population. This research focused on Muslims’ experience in Canada, and their relationship to the broader population, and was designed to provide comparisons with similar research in Europe and the USA to put Canada’s experience in a broader context. The Institute partnered with the CBC to generate national media coverage of the key results and insights. The Institute is now planning a follow-up study in 2015.
· The Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study (UAPS) (2008-2010) was the first-ever national study of Aboriginal Peoples living in the country’s largest cities. This study focused on better understanding and documenting the lived experience of this population (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), encompassing their identities, values, aspirations and experiences. The project was conducted under the guidance of an Aboriginal Advisory Circle, led by a primarily Aboriginal team of researchers and interviewers. The study results were released through a national media in 2010, followed by community engagement sessions in a number of cities. The project results and materials are now permanently hosted at the University of Winnipeg (www.uaps.ca).
· Canadians on Citizenship (2012) was a national study focused on understanding what Canadians as individuals believe it means to be a good citizen in this country, and how their concept of citizenship shapes their understanding of their rights, responsibilities, loyalties, and identities. This project was conducted in partnership with the Institute on Canadian Citizenship, the Maytree Foundation, CBC and RBC.
· The Black Experience Project in the GTA (2010 – current) is a groundbreaking study to better understand the lived experiences of individuals within the GTA Black community, and the factors leading to success and challenges (www.environics.ca/bep-gta). The results are intended to provide valuable insight and direction in identifying policies and other initiatives that will contribute to the health and vibrancy of the Black community, and by doing so, the health and vibrancy of the entire GTA community and beyond.
The project is founded on evidence demonstrating that survey research can serve as a powerful vehicle to give voice to individuals and groups who are not normally heard from. Such research offers a unique opportunity to articulate positive narratives and hopeful scenarios for the future that might not otherwise be properly heard. These stories will encourage personal initiative, stronger policies, and investment of public, private, and philanthropic resources. The Institute is partnering with the YMCA of Greater Toronto, United Way Toronto and Ryerson University, and with the support of more than 25 other Collaborating Partners. The final results of this research will be publicly released later in 2015.
Additional Honours and Awards
In 2009, Michael was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Ryerson University in Toronto.
Michael Adams has achieved a career marked by entrepreneurialism and innovation; a body of writing characterized by curiosity, humour, and intelligence; and a record of community engagement rooted in thoughtfulness and compassion. He has the deepest respect for the Order of Canada, and would be a worthy addition to its membership.
February 2015
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