Dr. Ron Dembo

Dr. Ron Dembo is the founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, an organization dedicated to a mass reduction in global environmental impact. Zerofootprint provides software and services to individuals, governments, universities, and corporations that measures and manages carbon footprint and engages employees and citizens worldwide in combating climate change. Zerofootprint came in first place and won Gold in the Climate Change category at the Canadian Environment Awards in 2008.

Prior to founding Zerofootprint, Dr. Dembo was the founder, CEO, and President of Algorithmics Incorporated, growing it from a start-up to the largest enterprise risk-management software company in the world, with offices in fifteen countries and over 70% of the world's top 100 banks as clients. Algorithmics was consistently voted as one of the top 50 best-managed companies in Canada.

Dr. Dembo has also had a distinguished ten-year academic career at Yale University, where he was cross-appointed between the Department of Computer Science and the School of Management. Dr. Dembo has published over sixty technical papers on finance and mathematical optimization, and holds a number of patents in computational finance.

Dr. Dembo is the author of three books: Seeing Tomorrow: Rewriting the Rules of Risk, co-authored with Andrew Freedman, published in April 1998; Upside Downside: Simple Rules of Risk Management for the Smart Investor, co-authored with Daniel Stoffman, published in March 2006; and Everything You Wanted to Know About Offsetting But Were Afraid to Ask, co-authored with Clive Davidson, and released in May 2007.

In May 2007, Dr. Dembo was made a lifetime Fields Institute Fellow. This fellowship is awarded to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community.

In July 2007, Dr. Dembo was inducted as a charter member of the Risk Who's Who. Dr. Dembo's alma mater, the University of Waterloo, honoured Dr. Dembo with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. He is also a member of the University of Waterloo's Deans Advisory Council in the Faculty of Environment, and a member of the Board of Advisors to the President at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Dr. Dembo is Chair of the Information Technology committee of the Board at Mount Sinai Hospital, and is a member of the Board of Governors of University of Toronto's NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) program.