Seed Media Group: Team

Adam Bly
Founder and CEO

Adam Bly is the founder and CEO of Seed Media Group, a diversified media, technology, and professional services company committed to advancing science and its potential to improve the state of the world.

He began his career at the age of 16 as the youngest researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, where he spent three years studying the biochemistry of cancer. Following his time in the lab, he set out to launch Seed, a new type of science magazine for our times – tag-lined “Science is Culture” – with the mission of raising and modernizing scientific literacy. “The best comparison for Seed,” wrote a media critic at the time of the magazine’s launch, “is the early years of Rolling Stone, when music was less a subject than a lens for viewing culture.” Under his leadership, Seed has earned acclaim for bridging long-standing divides between science and society – from art and design to politics and religion. For example, he co-founded the Seed/MoMA Salon, a monthly gathering of scientists, architects, and designers that helped lay the foundation for Design and the Elastic Mind, the ground-breaking exhibition about science and design at The Museum of Modern Art curated by Paola Antonelli.

In 2007, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is a recipient of the Golden Jubilee Medal from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and his achievements have been highlighted by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, “for showing people the scope and power of science not just as an object of study but as a key to understanding the world around us.” He has spoken around the world on the future of science and its role in society, most notably at the World Economic Forum (Davos), the Royal Society (London), the U.S. Congress (Washington), the National Academy of Sciences (Washington), the U.S. Department of State (Washington), the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (Beijing), the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (Mexico City), and the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and at universities including MIT, Harvard, Columbia, McGill, and Beijing. He has served on the nominating committees and juries of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, Technology Pioneers, the Earth Award, and the TED Prize, and sits on the Science Advisory Committee of the World Economic Forum, the External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center, the American Committee of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Communications Advisory Board of the National Academy of Sciences, and as an advisor to OECD’s Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. He was recently named Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation.

He is the editor of “Science is Culture: Conversations at the New Intersection of Science + Society” (HarperCollins) which has been translated into Spanish, Korean, Turkish, and Mandarin.

Born in Montreal, he currently lives in New York.

For speaking inquiries, please email Talia Khalil.