Jeff Jackson Professional services

Jeff Jackson, Ph.D., is Canada's leading voice in risk management, outdoors, education, and trails. He is connected to network of diverse colleagues with very specific and unique expertise and a proven track record delivering projects large and small, for government, organizations, schools and small business. 

He believes in relationships, listening, collaborating, planning, big ideas and fine details. Jeff will spend a great amount of time with you understanding your situation, work systems and issues before we commit to a path forward. Work produced will be specific, practical, professional and of high value.

Since 2001, first as a partner in Direct Bearing Risk Management and then as Jeff Jackson Professional Services, Jeff has contributed to over 100 consulting and expert opinion projects, ranging from multi year government contracts to legal cases to risk plans, audits, and reviews. For 25 years Jeff was a Professor and Coordinator of Algonquin College's Outdoor Adventure Tourism program, authoring several books and academic papers, contributing extensively to outdoor industry and experiential education in Canada. He was an early adopter and thinker in the systems school of risk management, and adapted it to the outdoors with the influential textbook Managing Risk. He is an award winning educator and risk manager, and travels extensively doing risk education, keynote presentations, and risk workshops across Canada, Australia, and the United States. His dynamic and frank style provokes thought and questions assumptions regarding risk, planning, organizational performance, and what can be considered normal. 

Jeff's Ph.D. is in organizational behaviour and safety management. His continued research focusses on organization and safety culture, how routines and assumptions shape safety performance, and peer influence. He has authored a number of books specific to managing risk and to trail management, and his Adventure Risk Report Blog is the most widely read risk commentary for the outdoor sector. In 2024 he was awarded the Charles 'Reb' Gregg Award for leadership in wilderness risk management.

Please reach out by phone, text or email. We are always happy to talk!

A sample of some of the projects, large and small, that we have contributed to:

 Risk Management Review of Recreation Trails, British Columbia Ministry of Forests, RSTBC 

 New Brunswick Provincial Parks Visitor Safety Planning, New Brunswick Ministry of Tourism 

 Work Health and Safety Management System Review, Geoscience Australia, Australian Government   

Meadow Lake Tribal Area Tourism Development Risk Management Initiative, Saskatchewan

Indigenous Tourism Operators' Risk Management Plans, Indigenous Tourism Association of New Brunswick

 Risk Management Planning, Fundy Trail Parkway, New Brunswick 

Provincial Mountain Bike Trail Rating System, British Columbia Ministry of Forests, RSTBC 

Ontario Trails Classification System, Ontario Trails Council

 North Vancouver and Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve Trail Risk Management Review   

International Standards Organization (ISO) TC-228 Adventure Standards Committee, Canadian representative   

Adventure Operator Risk Management Assessment Criteria, New Brunswick Ministry of Tourism

 Kamloops Bike Ranch Master Plan, British Columbia 

 Municipal Trail Inspection System, City of Owen Sound 

Technical Trail Feature Risk Management Policy, District of North Vancouver

Organization Safety Culture assessment and surveys, many organizations in Canada, United States and Australia

Expert opinion, legal proceedings, Canada, United States and England

Risk management trainer, Gougeon Insurance

Management Risk Training, Outward Bound USA

National Occupation Standards, Outdoor Guide, Tourism HR Canada