Peter Ellyard is Australia’s most prominent futurist, and is a strategist, author and speaker. As a speaker his addresses are noted for being informative, inspiring and highly motivational. A graduate of Sydney University and of Cornell University (PhD) with a background on both physical and biological sciences, he spent 15 years as a CEO of public policy organisations including two associated with Environment and Planning, and one with Industry and Technology, and was also Chief of Staff of an Environment Minister in Canberra for three years, before formally becoming a futurist after his appointment as CEO of Australia’s Commission for the Future.
Peter Ellyard is currently Chairman of the Preferred Futures Institute and the Preferred Futures Group, which he founded in 1991. He also chairs the Sustainable Prosperity Foundation and two start-up environmental companies. He is Adjunct Professor of Intergenerational Strategies at the University of Queensland, and is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators, the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, and the Australian Institute of Management. He is an elected Member of the International Union of Associations, based in Brussels, which has 45,000 international NGO members.
Peter Ellyard has been a Senior Adviser to the United Nations system for more than 30 years including to the 1992 Earth Summit where he was a senior advisor on both the climate change and the biodiversity conventions. In this he was the only Australian and one of only 20 globally. At other times he has been a senior consultant to the UNEP, UNDP and UNESCO. He has also advised the OECD over 20 years.
He has developed unique intellectual property and methodologies-a futurist’s toolkit- to assist people to understand and anticipate what the future might bring, and assist them to develop and implement visions and strategic actions to become both resilient future-takers in, and purposeful future-makers in 21st century society. Most of the job categories and products and services of 25 years hence have yet to be invented. Peter Ellyard can describe what these products and services will be. Peter envisages a global society that is prosperous, sustainable, harmonious, secure and just in the year 2050, and narrates what is being done, and can be done, to ensure its emergence. In doing this he is describing the emerging 21st century global economy.
Peter Ellyard’s most recent books are Designing 2050: Pathways to Sustainable Prosperity on Spaceship Earth (2008), and Destination 2050: Concepts Bank and Toolkit for Future-Makers (September 2011). His first book, Ideas for the New Millennium (1998, 2001) was an instant best-seller.
