Dee Smith

Home

Gordon Dee Smith

 

 
Dee Front Page Picture.png

A STATEMENT:  

Right now, as you read this, change is accelerating rapidly. Many recent events—from the pandemic, to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, to advances in AI—have signaled dramatic transformations that were already underway, engendered by the massively-connected “hyperobjects” we have created—agglomerations of people, institutions, technologies, and ideas that we can barely understand, let alone control or make sensible decisions about—that increasingly constitute the world today. Risks are now non-linear, long-tailed, fat-tailed, multiplicative, and cascading. And change is becoming more radical, meaning that it represents departures further and further away from what we have known in the very recent past, and what we have assumed will exist in the future. This accelerated, non-linear, radical change has very real, immediate, and escalating effects on all of us: from citizens to political leaders; from workers in factories to healthcare facilities, stores, and offices; from investors to business people. Tight-coupling of extremely complex, real-time systems increasingly throws up manifestations that are very difficult to predict but have enormous direct and 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order (knock-on or ‘n-order”) effects. We are only beginning to take this emerging reality into account, and to understand what it means. It is now a primary and urgent focus of my professional work and of my interests. Various pages on this web site, particularly the one devoted to Global Change, detail some of the ideas and approaches I am working with. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

Dee Smith 

ABOUT ME:  

As CEO of Strategic Insight Group (SIG), a company I founded 25 years ago, I specialize in business intelligence, foreign policy, and global change. At SIG my focus is transactional and investment intelligence, geopolitical and change risk analysis, but I am also active in media and cultural production. Over the years, my work has led me to projects in over 100 countries around the world. A few years ago, Raoul Pal asked me to create a television documentary series on global change; the result was the Real Vision Television documentary series “A World On The Brink with Dee Smith,” which premiered on PBS in April 2018, and of which I was executive producer and host. Currently, I am Chair of the Advisory Council of LLILAS/Benson Latin American Studies and Collections at the University of Texas at Austin, a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, a member of Chatham House in London, and a member of the Bretton Woods Committee in Washington, DC, as well as being involved with many other policy and cultural organizations. Before SIG, I worked in international venture capital (active in Latin America and Europe), and before that, was a founder and president of InterCultura, an NGO that organized international cultural projects around the world.

Detailed Bio

Scheduled Upcoming and Past Events

Chatham House: Latin America 2020 Summit
16-17 November 2020

Capital Connections Roundtable: “Finding the Maseratis”
23 October 2020

Emerging Markets: Post-COVID Risk & Reward: a SIG Webinar with Beth Morrissey
30 September 2020

IMDDA WEBINAR: “FINDING THE MASERATIS”
22 September 2020

WHAT TO DO ABOUT ESG: A SIG Webinar for investors
9 September 2020

Le Club B Innovation Series
12 August 2020

IVYFON Online Family Office Forum
28 July 2020

Unanticipated Consequences of COVID-19 for Investors and Businesses
8 July 2020

Transformations in Finance Conference
Speaker and Panelist
2-3 April 2020
CFA Society Calgary
Calgary, Canada

Turnaround Management Association - Central Texas February 2020 Meeting
Speaker
27 February 2020
Austin, Texas
Link to Event Description

Central American Migration Flier.jpg

Cátedra Ernesto Cardenal: The People, Economics, and Policy of Central American Migration
Presider and Interviewer
30 January 2020
University of Texas at Austin
Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies
Austin, Texas
Link to Event Description

Chatham House Latin America Conference 2019
Speaker
21 November 2019
London, U.K.
Link to Conference Website

Auerbach Grayson Emerging and Frontier Markets Conference
Keynote Speaker
29 October 2019
New York City, U.S.A
Link to Conference Website

The New Central American Crisis: A Conversation with Sergio Ramirez and Luis Guillermo Solis
Moderator
30 January 2019
Austin, Texas
Link to Video of the Conversation

The Dee Smith Intv_Show Poster.png
WotB Banner.png

A World on the Brink with Dee Smith

A World on the Brink is a television documentary series on global change and social and geopolitical risk, featuring Dee Smith, who wrote, hosted, and was executive producer of the series. A World on the Brink was produced by Real Vision Television and premiered in a 5-part version in 2017. A 4-episode version was shown on the PBS network across the US starting in 2018. More information here.

A World on the Brink: Original 5-part Series (premiered on Real Vision Television in October 2017)

Episode 1: A World on the Brink (watch here)
Episode 2: Globalization and its Discontents (watch here)
Episode 3: The Middle East (watch here)
Episode 4: Rising Threats (watch here)
Episode 5: What Tomorrow May Bring (watch here)

Interests

Twitter @DeeSmithTexas