Raised in Vancouver, Brendan learned compassion from his mother, to question relentlessly from his father, and to take life in stride from his two brothers. When Brendan was 16, a voluntourism trip cemented his path toward creating (the ever-so-vague) social good. Throughout a career working with and for a diverse array of communities, Brendan learned there is always another way to view the world.
Brendan learned to treasure our natural environment while living on a float on the Pacific, and paradoxically, while working in urban planning, he learned that the change needed to preserve our environment will in fact occur in cities. So it goes.
Since leaving home at 17, he has lived in ten cities and four countries, but nowhere has he felt truly at home until Calgary. Brendan is taking Next Up because learning is a lifelong journey, and he hopes to learn to influence others to best select their sources of learning.
Brendan aspires to heed a simple Vonnegutism: Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - god damn it, you've got to be kind.