About
A writer and builder working across institutions, systems and ideas.
David Gehry is a writer, policy advisor, consultant and institution builder based in Canada. He is President and Vice-Chancellor of Zaag University and CEO and President of QED Groups Inc. His work spans education, healthcare, public policy, culture, technology and public service — with a focus on turning ambitious ideas into functioning institutions.
Biography
The medium biography
David Gehry works at the intersection of institutions, public systems and ideas. He is President and Vice-Chancellor of Zaag University, where he is leading the design and development of the institution — its academic model, governance, operating systems and long-term structure — and CEO and President of QED Groups Inc., which develops ventures and platforms across sectors. His experience includes policy and advisory work with governments and organizations, extended engagement with healthcare and emergency-service systems, and sustained writing on institutional design, education, leadership and public responsibility. He writes essays, articles and books, hosts a podcast, produces video work and speaks to institutional and public audiences on the operating systems that make ambitious ideas durable.
The full biography
David Gehry works across a broad set of areas that are, in his own account, all expressions of a single underlying interest: understanding complicated problems, creating structures around them, and building things intended to matter.
He is President and Vice-Chancellor of Zaag University, where he leads the design and development of a new university — its academic model, its governance charter, its operating and financial architecture, and the institutional shape that must remain coherent as the university grows. He is also CEO and President of QED Groups Inc., which builds ventures, systems and platforms across sectors under a common operating philosophy.
His policy and advisory work concentrates on the point at which broad public objectives have to become implementable systems — governance structures, operating models, service designs and program architectures that continue to function after the announcement is over. He has worked with organizations and leaders in education, healthcare, public administration and the public-service and emergency-services domain, alongside long-standing personal experience in that domain.
Alongside this work, David is a writer, blogger and author, with essays and articles on institutional design, education, healthcare, systems, leadership and public life, and a forthcoming personal work on service, resilience and meaning. He produces a podcast, video series and public commentary intended to make complex ideas accessible without oversimplifying them.
He lives and works in Canada.
Working philosophy
How I approach the work
- 01
Systems over slogans
A good idea that lacks an operating system has not been built. The question is not whether the intention is admirable; the question is whether the machinery required to sustain the intention has been designed with the same care as the intention itself.
- 02
Implementation is the discipline
Most public failures are not failures of vision. They are failures at the handoff between vision and operations — where the announcement ends and the ordinary Tuesday begins. Serious work happens where the announcement ends.
- 03
Institutions outlive individuals — by design
The purpose of governance is to make the institution independent of the people currently in the room. If the institution cannot survive its founders, it was not built; it was staged.
- 04
Write it down
The organizations that endure share the habit of writing down not only what they decide, but why. This is how an institution learns without having to relearn.
- 05
Meaning is not incidental
Service, resilience, meaning and healing are not soft topics. They are what makes work sustainable across long horizons — and they are what the operating system either supports or, more commonly, silently erodes.
Affiliations & experience
Roles and areas of work
Current roles
- President and Vice-Chancellor — Zaag University
- CEO and President — QED Groups Inc.
- Writer, author, podcaster and public commentator
Areas of experience
- Public policy and institutional design
- Education and higher-education systems
- Healthcare and emergency-service systems
- Organizational governance and operating models
- Executive advisory and complex project structuring
- Public communication, writing and media
Personal perspective
A note about the work
A number of these fields — writing, policy, education, healthcare, public service, institution building — are usually treated as separate careers. They are, in my experience, versions of the same problem viewed from different angles.
The underlying question is whether the systems people depend on — as students, patients, citizens, colleagues — actually work in the moment they are needed. Everything I have chosen to work on returns to that question.
I would rather be honest about how hard this is than to write a biography that pretends otherwise. Most of the real work is quiet, unrewarded and long-horizon. It is also, in my judgment, the work most worth doing.