Andreas Souvaliotis

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HuffPost Canada!

And what a birthday celebration that was! The true definition of a cocktail mixer ... a superb and beautifully balanced blend of present and past political leaders, artists, publishers, prominent Bay Streeters, celebrated journalists, social entrepreneurs, dreamy young interns, our very own national...

Some leading political theorists have been suggesting that in recent years, our world's future power cores, and ultimate centres of influence will, once again, shift to our cities -- essentially reverting to the way things used to be up until the Middle Ages, when cities really ruled the world. This...

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, only charities could celebrate positive impact on society. We're living in a changing business world. If you accept the basic premise that some of our most talked-about social problems today (obesity, lack of physical activity, climate change and environmental degradation) represent...

Albert Einstein once famously said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." It may very well have been the great thinker's most prophetic warning ever. Here we are, faced with some of the gravest existential threats in the history of our species,...

The alarm bells were going off 20 years ago at the Rio Summit but few of us were listening. Six years ago, Al Gore raised the volume much higher with his film and we started paying a lot more attention, but we still didn't do much about it. And now...

Vision is arguably the most important, most desired, and most celebrated asset of leaders in the private sector. It's considered to be the core fuel and foundation of our success. Our shareholders, our employees, even our competitors assume that we're guided by our vision -- and that everything else, our...

I am a capitalist. I enjoy creating wealth and I thrive in an environment that supports the creation of wealth. But a critical part of capitalism is managing wealth and making sure we're creating real, sustainable, long-term value.

I love the fact that our country is...

Our national productivity and innovation challenges seem to have risen to the top of the agenda once again -- and for good reason. Despite all the talk and worry of the past couple of decades, all our key indicators are still pointing in the wrong direction; our productivity gains continue...

Ashoka, the world's leading incubator of social entrepreneurs, hosted a remarkable conference in Vienna, Austria this past weekend. The event was called "Globalizer" and it involved some of the brightest and most successful social innovators from every corner of the world. I was honoured to be invited along as a...

There has been a gradual and fascinating evolution of the prevailing mood in my birth country over the past few months. At first it was predictable denial -- "This isn't really happening"; "We're fine"; or "It's all exaggerations, myths and drama." Then my fellow Greeks became incredulous -- "How could...

Greece, the country that once upon a time was busy inventing democracy, philosophy and the notions of social justice for the world, has suddenly earned a reputation as one of the most reckless nations of our times -- a dishonest, fiscally irresponsible and nearly rogue problem child of the West...

I will never forget the moment -- I was having coffee with a former prime minister a few years ago and I was proudly sharing with him my idea of launching a responsible lifestyle incentive program across the country, when he suddenly glanced up at me and said: "You should...

It's been more than half a decade since Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth got us thinking and talking about climate change. And while the scientific consensus continued to solidify and our atmosphere continued to fill with more greenhouse gasses (we're now only a couple of years from crossing the psychologically...

In this great new century so much of our success comes from out-designing and out-innovating our opponents, instead of simply manufacturing bigger, faster or cheaper. We now describe our competitive differentiators with words like 'smarter,' 'cooler,' 'nicer,' 'greener' and 'more responsible.' And, without a doubt, it takes a very different...

As policy makers across our country grapple with the new reality of having to find significant carbon 'savings' throughout the daily economic life cycle of Canadians, public transit has suddenly become a major "cause célèbre." Despite the serious budget crunches and very limited system expansion plans in most of our...

It's election season in the largest province of our country and the parties are busy rolling out their usual promises. In stark contrast with some of the higher-engagement democracies in the world, where the dialogue between voters and candidates involves plenty of long-term strategy and vision, our campaigns tend to...

Thirty summers ago I chose to make Canada my home.

I came to this country not as an economic immigrant, like the many generations of Europeans who came here before me, but as a social immigrant. I hadn't grown up poor and I wasn't looking for a place where I...

My name is Andreas Souvaliotis and I run "AIR MILES for Social Change," one of the most prominent social ventures in Canada. It's the first business of its kind in the world -- we harness the enormous popularity of consumer loyalty points to build mass-appeal environmental and healthy lifestyle incentives...