Keith’s degree is in Communications with a long career converting complex issues into understandable and actionable information bytes. A mentored Presentation Specialist & Speaker Coach, Keith’s early background in teaching revealed a delightful talent for entertaining while encouraging critical thinking and inspiring others to adapt to change.
Keith’s career highlights include working for TVOntario, the Scarborough Health Department and Centennial College. For TVO, Keith co-authored “Let’s Teach TV” — a classroom guide for public school teachers K – 12 — and he also extensively promoted Media Literacy by conducting hundreds of workshops for students & parents across the province. This work led to an invitation from the Association for Media Literacy to co-author, with other AML members, the Ontario Ministry of Education curriculum guide for teaching media in the classroom. Keith also produced, directed & wrote the companion training video — circulated world wide. Keith subsequently designed and delivered health promotion presentations and workshops for Public Health in the City of Scarborough where he also originated “PublicHealth Television” — a magazine video series used locally and by other health departments through Ontario.
Keith remained with municipal government through the amalgamation of the City of Toronto — working with Public Health, Special Events, Corporate Communications, the City Clerks Office and Information & Technology.
Through two separate stints — as an adjunct to his government work — Keith taught Presentation Skills, Video and Web Writing classes for students attending Centennial College in Toronto. He continues to offer speaker training as a freelance coach.
While with the City of Toronto, Keith delivered communications and presentations on Social Media, Web Writing, Information Management, Web Content Management and, ultimately, Open Data. He was the first official blogger for the City and one of the first to use Social Media tools as an accepted part of government work. As Open Data Lead for the City, his speaking and communication efforts were central in engaging the local tech community with City staff. His “unofficial Open Data National Anthem” — the Open Data Song — went viral and led to many diverse connections and relationships across the world.
Connections Keith maintains to this day.
In 2017, Keith was invited to speak at the International Open Data and Urban Innovation Summit in Shanghai, China. His impressions while there — and subsequent research on how fast and how far China is moving with technology (including Open Data) — triggered an immediate passion to spread the news around artificial intelligence developments to non-practitioner audiences. In 2018, Keith founded the literacy AI project where he offers a series of workshops and immersive presentations on AI, Privacy & Digital Rights, Open Data and Social Media.
