After graduating from the University of Lethbridge in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Art, I left Canada for what became the most formative decade of my life—China.

I arrived expecting culture shock. What I encountered instead was systems shock.

China wasn’t just different. It was designed differently.

I began my time there teaching at the Lasalle Shanghai Design Institute—my dream job.

I wanted to become the kind of teacher who had shaped me: someone who could motivate diverse groups, command a room, and communicate ideas clearly across cultures.

Teaching taught me stage presence, empathy, and how ideas land differently depending on context.

But Shanghai itself was the real classroom.

Over ten years, I watched Shanghai transform in real time.

From street level, the change was astonishing: ring roads rising into the air, more than twenty subway lines installed, entire communities materializing—schools, pools, housing—block by block.

This growth wasn’t chaotic. It was coordinated.

Shanghai grew around one of the world’s largest collections of Art Deco architecture, not by erasing history, but by layering infrastructure on top of it.

The result was a city that felt both ancient and futuristic—dense, energetic, and relentlessly practical.

What I was witnessing wasn’t just urban development. It was systems thinking at national scale.

In 2003, I joined Bestway, a large sporting goods and toy manufacturer outside Shanghai. Bestway became my second education.

There, I learned the entire pipeline: product discovery → design for mass production → manufacturing → marketing → merchandising.

Nothing existed in isolation. Every decision upstream echoed downstream.

I oversaw global marketing and product development strategies that helped propel Bestway to a 90% market share in Europe—a great problem to have.

When dominance risked becoming a constraint, we spun up tactical brands so hypermarket clients could diversify promotions without cannibalization.

This wasn’t theory. This was systems under load.

One of the most meaningful things I built at Bestway was The Innovation Lab.

Partnering with institutions like Stanford, Umeå, and Carnegie Mellon, we flew interns into our Shanghai studio.

Together, we used design thinking to conduct human-factor research, identify success criteria, and develop products customers actually wanted—products that were also profitable.

Innovation wasn’t a slogan. It was operationalized.

I ran workshops, coached teams, art-directed product portfolios, and sold ideas up the chain of command.

With designs approved, I found myself running photo productions on beaches in Thailand, producing catalogues, commercials, and campaigns—then returning on stage to sell those ideas globally.

Supply chain, media, design, and commerce weren’t separate disciplines. They were one continuous system.

What China understands—better than anywhere else I’ve seen—is that supply chain is infrastructure.

Transportation, manufacturing, logistics, telecommunications, and finance aren’t background utilities. They are the operating system of prosperity.

Over a single generation, China rebuilt: transportation networks, manufacturing capacity, telecommunications, financial rails.

This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because systems were designed with long time horizons.

Where many countries struggle to plan beyond election cycles, China plans in decades.

That long-range thinking unlocks coordination: ports connect to factories, factories connect to logistics, logistics connect to markets.

The result is speed, scale, and adaptability.

Having spent over a decade in China, I don’t see it through ideology. I see it through systems performance.

I experienced: extraordinary hospitality, tireless work ethic, deep pride in craft, and an unmatched ability to mobilize people toward shared outcomes.

The food is exceptional. The people are warm, curious, and welcoming.

And the infrastructure works—because it was treated as a national priority.

China taught me that when systems are aligned, value compounds.

China taught me to think in: pipelines, not projects; decades, not quarters; systems, not silos.

It showed me what happens when supply chain, manufacturing, education, and media are treated as foundational infrastructure, not afterthoughts.

That perspective has informed everything I’ve done since—from retail and media platforms to workshops, writing, and community projects.

China wasn’t just where I worked. It’s where I learned how systems actually scale.