Even in the age ruled by massive tech campuses and startup accelerators it is easy to lose sight of the fact that innovation is not only the province of Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. Innovation has so colonized popular discourse that it has lost much of its specific meaning. However, in the seaside fishing village of Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia, a community better known for artistic vistas than venture capital, innovation is taking root in a different manner. It’s lean, local, and born out of crisis.
Leading the charge is Gary Stairs, a veteran technologist, humanitarian strategist, and people-focused innovator. As the creator of Stellar RHL and Stellar Futures, and the visionary behind StellarAlerts.AI, he has forged a reputation as a systems thinker not afraid to challenge big questions and construct even larger solutions.
“We don’t work at the center,” he explains. “We work at the edges. That’s where the new world is being built.”
A Humanitarian Heartbeat in a Digital World
Gary’s professional path cannot be pigeonholed. It spans continents, decades, and fields. He started out in nuclear power, then public safety, and moved to the trenches of computer-based education, developing first-generation e-learning courses that would find their way to hundreds of thousands of learners. He directed the development of global IT security compliance courses for top automaker Daimler AG.
Similarly, he and his team facilitated digital training and capacity-building for humanitarian organizations such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization, the UN System Staff College and the UN Department of Peace Operations.
But through this international career, his North Star never shifted: technology, he is convinced, must be for people. That conviction has steered the development of his work from public safety through learning systems and now, into the climate resilience arena.
“Technology without empathy is just noise,” he states. “We want to create systems that can tell the difference between a data point and a human.”
Innovation as a Family Legacy
Gary doesn’t talk about innovation like most tech executives. For him, it’s not just a strategy, it’s an inheritance. In his home office, perched above the Atlantic, one will find relics that form the bedrock of his philosophy: his grandmother’s paintbrushes, once used in upstate New York, and a sepia-toned photograph of his grandfather’s crews log-driving across a Maine backwoods stream.
“They both were problem-solvers and creators,” he explains. “One in fine arts, the other in natural resource enterprise. I learned early on that creativity and practicality were not enemies; they were siblings,” he adds.
This domestic combination of imagination and pragmatism informs Gary’s own approach to difficulty. Whether he is discussing digital twins, real-time GIS mapping, or emergency communications, his own talk is not rooted in nomenclature, but metaphor and narrative.
“In music, we jam. In theater, we improv. In linguistics, nous bricolons (we tinker). Innovation, at its best, is recombination,” shares Gary.
The Fire That Changed Everything
After more than 34 years in public safety, eLearning and international humanitarian work, Stairs thought he had seen it all—until disaster hit home. In 2023, Nova Scotia was faced with a climate reckoning.
Fierce wildfires and destructive floods ravaged rural communities, such as those on the South Shore. Gary’s own family had to flee. For the first time, the remote crises he had assisted others through had come to his front door. “It was the biggest wake-up call of my life,” he states. “Houses were destroyed. Lives and livelihoods were destroyed. We had hardly any warning and the official updates were sparse, unreliable.”
And from there, the concept for StellarAlerts.AI came: a hyperlocal, artificial intelligence-driven emergency alert system that combines geographic intelligence, predictive modeling, and digital infrastructure to save lives where seconds matter.
“I’ve been in the chaos—when entire communities were terrorized by disasters they could have been better warned about,” he says. “That’s why we will deliver real-time alerts. Because when danger strikes, every second—and every life—matters.”
Stellar Futures: Punching Above Its Weight
Stellar Futures, the small parent organization behind StellarAlerts.AI, is a testament to lean ingenuity. Founded on modest capital, largely personal and community based, the company has always relied more on grit than glamour. It has delivered world-class content to over 600,000 learners in 23 languages—from First Nations students on the Quebec-New Brunswick border, to the Daimler IT security department and their corporate academy in Stuttgart. Among others, Stellar has also created interactive, educational games for the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the LA Times.
One of Stellar’s all-time favourite projects was creating the award-winning Congressional Redistricting Game for the USC Game Innovation Lab and the Annenburg Center. “We’ve survived by staying nimble, by pivoting when others would panic,” Gary says.
Over 23 years, Stellar has evolved from a digital courseware company to a virtual innovation lab for educational equity, mobile access, and most recently, emergency response. At every turn, the driver of change has not been market trends, but changing human needs.
Digital Twins and the Future of Preparedness
Among the most cutting-edge tools in Stellar’s portfolio are digital twins and digital triplets: virtual, interactive models of real-world systems. These allow emergency planners, community leaders, and even average citizens to simulate disaster scenarios before they unfold. Better yet, they can be used in combination with other models and environmental data to issue timely and accurate warnings before disaster strikes.
“To power our AI-powered alerting and warning technologies we’re building 3D digital models of communities, roadways, coastlines, entire communities,” says Gary. “We can stress-test them against floods, fires, evacuations. That means when the real thing hits, we’re not improvising. We’re going to be ready; we whole-heartedly believe in early warnings for all,” he adds.
With digital triplets, Stellar takes it a step further. The triplet’s systems will have the potential capacity to combine emotional and behavioral information, providing a view of how individuals really behave under pressure. It’s a futuristic leap from infrastructure modeling to human-focused crisis response.
Gary shares, “You can’t protect a community unless you understand the people in it. Their fears. Their habits. Their response times. That’s what triplets offer – time is the differentiator: the past thus informs both the present and the future. Accordingly, time and geography are collapsed.”
Supported by Global Partners, Grounded in Local Purpose
In early 2025, StellarAlerts.AI picked up momentum after winning Amazon Web Services Canada and PREDICTif’s National Commercial Pitch Competition, earning $50,000 in equity-free investment and access to advanced AI infrastructure. It was also chosen by Invest Nova Scotia’s Accelerate program, earning a further $45,000 to create pilots and export-ready prototypes.
These recent awards confirmed the Stellar model: small, regionally based, and world scalable. A recent case study by Houston based PREDICTIF stated: “StellarAlerts.AI is at the forefront of a new paradigm for real-time 3D modeling empowered by artificial intelligence to advance emergency preparedness and resilience to climate-induced disasters.”
From Isolation to Innovation
Where others view Nova Scotia’s geographical isolation as a challenge, Gary considers it a proving ground for perseverance. “Innovation here is like having grown up in the wilds,” he says. “You learn to construct out of what you have around you. You adapt, you hustle, and you listen, really listen, to people.” That philosophy carries through to Stellar’s focus on place-based innovation: tech solutions that are firmly grounded in local context, culture, and geography.
“It’s not about forcing people to use software,” Gary maintains, “but co-creating systems with them. If the system doesn’t know your town, your language, your weather, it’s not a solution. It’s just noise.”
Servant Leadership in a Time of Uncertainty
In an era in which startups pursue unicorn status and founder myths hog the headlines, Gary is a different kind of figure. He talks more in terms of listening than of leading, and if questioned about his approach to leadership, he discusses not strategy but servant leadership.
“Leadership means being the last to speak and the first to act. It means sharing the credit and owning the failure,” he says. This humility has permitted Stellar to be adaptable, innovative, and intensely human-centered. Projects range from eLearning to help WHO with international corporate transformation, to conservation education and apps for the young, from creating the Canadian national Community Emergency Preparedness video series to Stellar and partners’ current climate modeling. “Balance ambition with authenticity,” he says. “Don’t chase someone else’s model, build your own.”
A Big Hairy Humanitarian Goal
Gary is motivated not by valuation or exit potential. It is what he refers to as the “Big Hairy Humanitarian Goal“: applying tech to safeguard, elevate, and empower. “We’re building systems to help people thrive and be more resilient,” he says. “Not just survive.”
That includes delivering multi-channel, accessible emergency alerts to people without smartphones, ensuring multilingual support for diverse populations, and working with rural and Indigenous communities to co-design digital infrastructure tailored to their unique needs.
Gary adds, ‘Emergency systems must be for everyone, not just the affluent or digitally connected. In emergency alerting, it’s the last mile that’s the hardest, and the most important. This belief differentiates us from existing systems and our competitors.”
Atlantic Canada as Launchpad, Not Limitation
Though with world ambitions, Gary has no intention of moving his business off the South Shore. He thinks that Atlantic Canada, somewhat ignored in the national technology story, has an essential part to play in the future of innovation.
“Here’s the paradox, as prominent Fogo Island community developer Zita Cobb would say: if you want things to remain the same, they must change,” he says. “We’re preserving culture by evolving. We’re keeping our roots strong by reaching outward,” he adds.
With changing trade patterns, unpredictable geopolitics, and pressures brought on by climate change, the time is right for rural, regional innovation ecosystems that value resilience over profit and service over scale.
Looking Ahead: Building Systems that Serve Everyone
Gary and his team are already constructing the next generation of climate adaptation planning tools, real-time evacuation modeling tools, and even automated logistics coordination during emergency events: StellarAlerts.AI. “What’s coming next isn’t just smarter software—it’s smarter systems,” Gary says. “Systems that are inclusive, responsive, and human-centered. We are not just modelling infrastructure—we are modelling how people respond in crisis.”
The Achievement Saga
Throughout his illustrious career, Gary has won many accolades. These include the Simon Fraser University President’s Research Award, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the AWS Canada National Commercial Pitch Winner, the NS South Shore Business Awards Innovation Finalist, the Canadian Telecommunications Association Connected to the Community Award, the NB Premier’s Industry Innovation Challenge and is Director Emeritus of renowned Canadian publisher Goose Lane Editions.
The Future is Human—and It’s Here
In a world fixated on speed, scale, and disruption, Gary presents an alternative vision: one of peaceful, intentional, human-centered innovation. From a coastal village where crisis begat creation, to global acclaim and life-saving technologies, his body of work serves as a testament that the greatest technologies don’t do away with humanity, they amplify it.
“The future is already here,” he says. “The question is: how can we ensure that it will absolutely serve us all?”
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