Dr. James R. Dewald

TAKING CHARGE AND MAKING IT HAPPEN

Jim Dewald joins the Alberta Global Forum with 20 years of experience in the real estate development industry, a commitment to community building and affordable housing, and academic expertise in Business Strategy and Global Management. He is committed to initiatives that help build Calgary into a strong community and that encourage our province to become a leader in environmental stewardship.

“The Alberta Global Forum has no hidden agenda,” he says. “It has a clear commitment to facilitating constructive dialogue about important issues in a safe forum. Importantly, Calgarians have a can-do spirit, and if there is an issue to address, Calgarians will take charge and make it happen. The Alberta Global Forum helps to facilitate this action.”

For Dewald, focusing on the environment is a natural direction for our resource rich province to take a leadership role in the global sphere.

“It’s frustrating when people say Canada only contributes one per cent of emissions in the world,” he says. “We have a responsibility to be a leader in the world on how to efficiently and responsibly extract and utilize our resources.” Now an Assistant Professor at the Haskayne School of Business, Dewald and his colleague, Bev Sandalack are conducting research that counters the long-held perception that suggests we can’t have both a strong economy and strong environmental stewardship. “We’re finding this is untrue,” he says. “Good social planning and good environmental stewardship will almost always end up in positive economic returns.”

For Dewald, engaging with the larger community is about even more than practical research and dialogue. It’s about taking action to make things happen. That’s why he became involved with Habitat for Humanity while he was CEO of Hopewell ten year ago. “We built three houses in a blitz build – one week per house – with the help of around 40 volunteers,” he says. “It was so rewarding because the people who were to receive the homes were part of the build team and at the end we got to hand over the keys directly to them.”

Jim Dewald is Assistant Professor in the Strategy and Global Management Area of the Haskayne School of Business. He holds a PhD (Business Strategy) from the University of Calgary, and B.Sc. (Civil Engineering) and MBA (Organization Theory) degrees from the University of Alberta. He has been on numerous private and public boards, and is currently the Chair of the Board for HomeCo (not-for-profit affordable housing), a Trustee of Boardwalk REIT, and a partner in Peters-Dewald Land Company Inc. (real estate development). Prior to pursuing his academic interests, he held many senior management positions, including CEO of two major real estate development companies.

Jim has several published academic articles to his credit, along with two book chapters, and two books. He co-writes the urban design column for the Calgary Herald, and is the Calgary Eyeopener (CBC Radio) Real Estate columnist. He was awarded an Alberta Real Estate Graduate Scholarship, McLeod Young Weir Graduate Scholarship, USASBE (United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) best paper award, and was recognized as Calgary’s Citizen of the Year in 1999. His principal research areas include strategic decision-making, cognitive resilience, and value-based strategy theory. Jim is a member of the Academy of Management.