Chris Luebkeman on Being a Futurist & What's Humanity's Outlook

Path Passion Purpose by DIONZ

Chris Luebkeman’s career to date has spanned professions and geographies. His personal learning journey, encouraged by a family of entrepreneurs and educators, took him from his midwestern birthplace of Cincinnati, Ohio to Vanderbilt, Cornell and eventually to the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. His multidisciplinary education (geology, civil engineering, structural engineering, and a Doctorate in Architecture) led him to became an academic gypsy teaching courses in Design and in Technology at the University of Oregon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at the MIT. His research at that point focused on the confluence of the digital and physical. He created, and coded, the first web-based teaching site in architecture and subsequently dove into understanding what we now call the ‘digital transformation’ of the home of the future. His desire to make things real took him to the global design consulting firm of Arup in London where he led the Research and Development group. He then became a corporate Intrapreneur by founding the Foresight, Innovation and Incubation teams and was accused by the Guardian to have a mindset “in league with the future”. For twenty years he shared his observations and insights by leading projects focused on the future for Arup, it’s clients and for many of the world’s leading institutions. He and his team created unique tools and techniques which progressively permeated the world of foresight and strategy. He is deeply passionate about curating constructive dialogue, insatiably curious, loves to develop future scenarios to better understand the opportunities which will be created by change and, perhaps most importantly, to evolve positive solutions to the profound challenges we face today. Chris has spoken at TED, Aspen Ideas, hosted conversations at, and for, WEF and keynoted hundreds of conferences around the world. He is a member of the prestigious Research Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC) of Singapore, the Steering Committee of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects, of the external advisory Board of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore and of the Brain Trust of the Climate Music Project.

He returned to ETH in Zurich in 2020 as a strategic advisor to the President and Executive Board. There, he founded the Strategic Foresight Hub within the Office of the President to enhance the futures literacy of the Institution, to review and rewrite the strategy process in order to help his Alma Matter continue to be one of the best technical Universities in the world. While doing all of this, he also co-founded [y]our 2040 whose mission is to be a world-renowned community of actionists shaping the future, sharing ideas, influencing global dialogues, building momentum and implementing creative solutions to accelerate the transition to a regenerative future. He combines an attitude of pragmatic optimism with curiosity and a deep sense of planetary responsibility in all that he does.