I have been a futurist since the late 1980s, having learned the profession on the job working with Joe Coates and Jennifer Jarratt, remarkable futurists and leaders in the field. Jennifer and I continue to collaborate in our consultancy, Leading Futurists LLC, and our practice is a true meeting of the minds. Jennifer's strengths fill gaps in mine abilities, and I hope I do the same for her.
The focus of my work, as evidenced by my blog, Foresight Culture, is in finding ways for real people, in real organizations to explore the future, and find meaning in it. The ideal is a culture of foresight. Its promise is great. But underneath that high aspiration we aspire to is the potential to add foresight all through an organization, in small and big ways, and to involve more people in it. That's a great goal and I enjoy exploring new ways to help people get there. I also work on a broad knowledge base on the future. It is the raw material for our work for the organizations we consult with.
Day-to-day, Jennifer and I maintain and grow, an ongoing, global environmental scan. We draw insights for our clients from the scan, and in turn learn more when we work with them to understand the challenges and opportunities in their future.
I live and work in Washington DC. I am raising two sons with my wife Jane, who is a real estate developer. Jane manages complex commercial real estate projects from conception, through construction and move-in. She keeps a hard hat in her trunk, and is comfortable working with engineers, architects, community groups, laborers, bankers, and so on. She is great at understanding complex systems and the intersection of forces, trends, issues, and stakeholder interests. In other words, she'd make a great futurist.
My non-futures life (is that really possible to have?) includes volunteering at my sons' schools, and in our local Little League. I like a big range of musical genres, and have struggled on and off to learn to play guitar. My family and I like to travel out west, hike in the mountains, and have close encounters with wildlife.
You can find me on Twitter under: @jbmahaffie and @packfutur
