BIOGRAPHY: William C. Stratas

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William C. Stratas [president@planetcast.com] is an information-age entrepreneur with a varied and accomplished background.

William currently serves as founder and president of Planetcast Presentations, Inc., a multi-faceted internet consultancy based in Toronto, Canada, which he launched in April 1996. Planetcast is active in streaming media production services, internet consulting and marketing, as well as web design, e-commerce and web application development.

William was also a founding partner, director and chief technology officer of WorkdayTV.com, a wireless mobile financial news webcasting enterprise that he operated successfully with key partner Garth Turner from 2000-2001.

Prior to Planetcast, William was an author and publisher for several years, operating in special markets with a single title targeted at the U.S. real estate and mortgage lending markets. In 1993, this innovative marketing product was awarded Sales & Marketing New Product of the Year honors by the National Association of Realtors in the United States.

For several years prior, William was an executive in corporate communications and investor relations at Tridont Health Care Inc., a Canadian dental office management and franchising company with diversified activities in various health related fields. In 1998, William published A Stroke of Luck, the biography of Dr. Howard Rocket, Tridont's founder and chairman, following Howard's life-altering survival from a stroke. Dr. Rocket donated copyright in his book and all financial proceeds to the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute in support of stroke research and patient care.

Born in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, and educated at Trinity College, University of Toronto, William pursued a career as a photojournalist while completing his studies in the early 1980s. He travelled on the election campaign tours of Canadian prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark, as well as U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. His images have been published nationally in books and newspapers, and his web photo gallery of Historic Moments in Canadian Politics is widely recognized as a compelling archive of historical political photographs from the tumultuous 1978-1984 era.

Eldest son in a talented family, his father is a retired veterinarian, his mother a former elected member for the constituency of Scarborough Centre in the 31st Parliament of Canada, one brother is a litigation lawyer, and the other is an engineer and technology executive, while renowned opera soprano Teresa Stratas is a 2nd cousin.

William Stratas is a four-year member of Business Network International, Toronto Corporate Connections chapter (BNI: Canada/USA), Young Entrepreneurs Association of Canada (YEA), the Toronto Internet Developers Association (TIDA), and the former Interactive Multimedia Arts and Technologies Association (IMAT), where in addition he served as an elected member of the board of directors. William has also served as a part-time lecturer and instructor for internet marketing at George Brown College, as a guest lecturer for the new media program at the Canadian Film Centre, and is a member of the program advisory committees for information architecture and e-commerce/e-business at Centennial College, all based in Toronto.

In August 2002 William began an ambitious new project, assembling a professional support team to make tangible his vision for a memorial to victims of the World Trade Center attacks in New York City. Motivated by an instinct for dignified and generous accommodation of victim family interests, his team's proposal was submitted formally to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation on June 30, 2003, as part of that agency's international design competition for the WTC site memorial. His competition entry is permanenty housed in the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation's online exhibition of memorial design proposals. As a further effort in evangelism and dedication to this cause, in December 2003 William organized Competitor Forum at New York University, the first-ever independent collaborative gathering of WTC memorial competition designers, architects and entrants from across the United States.

In his leisure time, William reads business magazines, skates (his formal hockey career ended as a goaltender at age 13), shoots video, reads extensively (biography and history are preferred genres), explores the Web, and explores new personal horizons.

» Last updated:  September 2005