Mackenzie sees life as a juicy adventure ready to be gobbled up. He’s the person that casually says things like ‘this one time when I was drinking mint tea and smoking a hookah pipe with Bedouin nomads in Morocco I got sand in my camera lens which seized the whole thing.’
He’s an avid traveler with nearly 50 countries under his belt, a certified sommelier and sake scholar, a serial entrepreneur in the tour and hospitality sector, a wine & language educator, and overall connoisseur of life.
After working in Europe and Latin America as an English teacher with International House, Mackenzie shifted into the hospitality sector working with several high-profile restaurants in downtown Toronto.
In 2015 he founded New World Wine Tours in order to share his passion for the Ontario wine industry with locals and visitors alike. This led to the development of two inaugural Airbnb Experiences for the Toronto launch. His Sake A to Z and Queen West Pastry Crawl later became part of the opening tour offering of Eating Through TO.
Mackenzie is the in-house sommelier for CAASA where he curates tasting events to facilitate networking and organic connections between members and enrich the experience for delegates at CAASA’s conferences across Canada.
More recently Mackenzie has diversified into the fields of Web3 and coworking stemming from a fascination of how of tech and business intersect with arts and culture.
In 2022 he co-founded Web3 Calgary, hosting several educational and social events in Calgary, Canada. He hosted a panel on NFTs for Alberta Treasury Branch, and gave a TEDx talk on Community Building with NFTs.
Mackenzie took the creative the creative lead for Polka Potions, an NFT project for the Polkadot and Kusama blockchains that feature custom cocktail recipes attached to digital art with the functionality to be used as event tickets for Web3 Conferences. This took him to Amsterdam for AmsterDOT, Denver for ETH Denver, and Buenos Aires for Polkadot Decoded. Developed with Polka Häus, TrickyNFTs, and ArteraLabs, the collection was also featured in Europe’s first NFT vending machine at NFT London, organized by NFT NYC.
He’s also joined the team at Work Nicer to manage member experience, and strategic partnerships.
Next up Mackenzie is expanding his events and tours across major Canadian cities, The USA, and abroad.
In 2023 he’ll be launching a new project to educate and entertain wine enthusiasts in a new and exciting way. This will be rolled out through social content, in-person events, a web-course, and more. Stay tuned!
Read more about his career here.
Check out his videos, travel photography, and blog on social media.
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