Bruce Murray Firestone 1-page CV

Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (Civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD

Bruce Firestone is best known as an entrepreneur and founder of NHL hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, their home arena, Canadian Tire Centre, and the Ottawa Senators Foundation, a children’s charity, as well as author, professor, coach, consultant, mentor, real estate broker, columnist and urban guru. Prof Bruce is an effective keynote speaker for organizations with a positive focus on creating opportunity for their stakeholder group. Firestone advises counties, towns and cities as well as economic development agencies on how to develop live-work-play-learn-shop-grow-make-build-affordable-diversified-sustainable-visitable-neo-urbanist communities based on the principal that nothing is sustainable unless it is also economically sustainable.

“Bruce Firestone has an inspirational message and a voice that will break down the walls,” Carolyn Parker, Triple I Event Services

Bruce applied to go to McGillUniversity in Montreal, at 14, arrived after turning 15 and graduated as a civil engineer before legally an adult (then age 21). He was rejected in his first job search because he was considered a ‘child’, not legally responsible for his actions. Three and a half weeks later he was living in Sydney, Australia. A new and exciting labor government had just been elected. First two things Prime Minister Gough Whitlam did were recall Aussie troops from Vietnam and lower the age of majority to 18.

Firestone worked for the New South Wales government doing operations research and building mixed integer programming models to solve significant environmental issues that LGAs (Local Government Authorities) in the Sydney region were facing at the time. While there, he continued his education at the University of New South Wales where he obtained his Masters of Engineering-Science degree (traffic and transportation) and then at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he received his PhD in urban economics.

He was among the first group in Australia to fly hang gliders and not die. He has traveled/worked in Canada, Australia, the United States, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, India, Sweden and many other nations.

“‏Entrepreneurs follow a moral path when they—first, take care of their business so second, the business can take care of their families so that, third, their families can take care of them so, fourth, they don’t become a burden on society or their fellow human beings, so, fifth, they can help others so that, sixth, others can help their business,” Prof Bruce

Bruce got his start in business in his late 20s with just $10,000 for a downpayment and a yard of guts, which he invested in a faltering business that he turned into a commercial real estate empire; this became the foundation for a successful bid to bring the National Hockey League back to Ottawa after a nearly 60-year hiatus. In just nine years, that business grew from $350,000 in revenues to $120 million. Then Firestone put it all on the line, risking tens of millions of dollars, to bring the Senators back to Ottawa. It became a high tension, multi-faceted endeavor with all the suspense of a Borgia series, with competing cities and political interests aligned against his team’s bid. Their resulting success changed the city of Ottawa and brought a sense of pride to all of Canada at a time when the country was going through another tough recession, and had already lost two existing NHL teams, in Quebec and Winnipeg. Bruce has started/coached over 300 enterprises as well as taught or studied at McGill University, Laval University, Harvard University, University of Western Ontario, University of New South Wales, Australian National University, University of Ottawa (faculties of management and engineering) and Carleton University (schools of architecture and business).  

You can follow Firestone on twitter @ProfBruce and @Quantum_Entity and read his blog at www.profbruce.tumblr.com. You can find his works at www.brucemfirestone.com. 

His current motto is, “Making Impossible Possible”.

140 Character Résumé:

Bruce’s an entrepreneur/real estate broker, developer & coach/urban guru/keynote speaker/Sens founder/novelist/blogger/peerless husband/dad.

Writings and Awards include:

Entrepreneurs Handbook II, Real Estate Handbook, Quantum
Entity trilogy, Real Estate Investing Made Easy, Retire Rich Retire Early, Quotes
for Entrepreneurs, Don’t Back Down, the real story of the founding of the NHL’s
Ottawa Senators. Prof Bruce won a Canada 125 Anniversary Medal and an Educator of
Year award; he was inducted into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame as well.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Ms Nina Brooks, ninabrooks@rogers.com

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