Michael Adams

Michael Adams is the president of the Environics group of research and communications consulting companies which he co-founded in 1970 and which today employ over 200 professionals in offices located in seven cities in Canada and the United States.

In addition to numerous articles, frequent commentary in the broadcast media and presentations at conferences, seminars and annual meetings in North America, Europe and Asia, Mr. Adams is also the author of four Canadian best sellers: Sex in the Snow: Canadian Social Values at the End of the Millennium (published in 1997), Better Happy Than Rich? Canadians, Money and the Meaning of Life, (2000) and Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, (2003), and American Backlash: The Untold Story of Social Change in the United States, (2005). All four books have been published by Penguin.

Fire and Ice won the prestigious 2003/04 Donner Prize for the best book on Canadian public policy and was selected in the fall of 2005 by the Literary Review of Canada as one of the 100 most important books ever published in the country.

His current book project, with working title, Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism, scheduled for publication in the fall of 2007, focuses on the promise and challenge of Canadian multiculturalism.

Michael Adams holds an Honours B.A. in Political Science from Queen's University (1969) and a M.A. in Sociology from the University of Toronto (1970) and was named as one of the 100 most influential people in Canadian communications according to Marketing Magazine’s Power List 2005.

Outside the field of research consulting, Mr. Adams has a variety of other interests including partnership in the Robert Craig Winery in Napa Valley, California, which has been rated by The Wine Spectator as one of the top 25 wineries in California.