Bruce Withrow

Strategic Planning Retreats | Board Retreats | Customer Advisory Board Meetings | Conferences

Bruce founded Meeting Facilitators International in 1992 after recognizing the growing need by senior management for experienced facilitators who could handle strategic planning retreats. Since then, he has facilitated over 900 strategy sessions, board retreats, customer advisory board meetings, and conferences across Canada, the United States and Europe.

Business-focused and results-driven, Bruce is accustomed to working closely with senior management teams and their boards. While his clients come from different industries, and different countries, they all share one overriding objective. To reach agreement on an effective plan of action based on a thorough, and productive debate of the issues.

A skilled, neutral, and independent facilitator, Bruce navigates his clients through high-stakes meetings, keeping them on time and on task regardless of how demanding the group or subject matter may be.

With strategic planning clients ranging from Fortune 100 businesses to Non Profit Industry and Trade Associations, Bruce has significant experience working with executives. His customer advisory board clients include pharmaceutical and medical device companies who regularly use advisory boards, as well as companies who were just considering their first advisory board meeting. He has also led large teams of facilitators providing facilitation services for a variety of clients hosting conferences.

The variety and sheer volume of his experience – combined with his ability to quickly assimilate and master new and often esoteric material – has often led to meeting participants expressing surprise upon learning that Bruce isn’t actually trained in their fields.

“Our neutrality and objectivity are highly-valued by our clients. We are probably the only people in the room who don’t have a stake in the outcome, which puts us in the best position to be impartial and unbiased. And by taking over the facilitation of the meeting, we allow the CEO or Chair to participate in the meeting in a way they never could before. This – combined with our experience and our toolkit – is what we bring.”

Bruce has served on the board of Strategic Leadership Forum in Toronto, where he was the innovator behind one of their most successful series of events and the chair of their most successful conference ever.