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Ray Buschmann Background

Ray Buschmann is an Australian, born in Sydney and joined the energy industry in 1977, with recent 15 years in various international senior management positions in Thailand, South Africa, Singapore, Dallas Texas, and San Ramon California USA. He has travelled extensively throughout the world (95 countries and six continents at last count), sharing his managerial experience, especially encouraging others around the world to use applied creativity and ingenuity tools in the work place.

Ray is the author of a paper: “Ideas Galore – What Do We Do Now?”, and his unique approach to idea management has been used as a case study in the MBA course, “Management of Innovation” at the Università Cattolica, Piancenza Italy. He has been referenced in “Fortune” magazine, featured in “The Future of Innovation – Practice & Possibility Among the Most Effective Large Corporations”, ILO Institute USA, and “Finance Week”, South Africa.

It was during this time of rich diversity that he also became interested in genealogy and set himself a goal to actively represent his ancestors through documented stories, and other factual information that uniquely distinguishes an individual. He noted that in most cases, genealogy was being transfixed on dates (birth, death & marriage) and not taking the opportunity to distinguish the deceased individual as a unique and interesting person who had created their own legends and sagas: everyone has an interesting story to tell. There were countless late nights as he juggled his passion for genealogy, as well as his day job - ultimately becoming the Global Innovative Solutions Manager for the Chevron marketing organisation.

In mid 2007 he received the news that his first grandchild was on the way, and with his wife Angie, decided to return to Australia and give up the corporate environment. He started his own Australian business: "Solving the Impossible Pty Ltd" in Sydney, and continued creativity workshops and publications, including the very popular monthly edition of "Thinking Matters" - a 10 page newsletter packed with interesting ingenuity and innovative information. This also gave him much more time for genealogy.

As his grand-son Jay grew, and was joined by another, Nate in 2009, the realisation came to him that their interest in genealogy probably would not appear until they were about 30-45 years old when most children start to ask serious questions about their family history. A quick calculation in human longevity immediately highlighted a major gap: he needed to start to get this information documented now, and ensure one of his legacies would be a comprehensive genealogy of his entire family going back to the 1600's. With all the unique genealogy skills he had acquired he also wanted to help others find their way.

On ANZAC Day in April 2011, after months of preparation, "www.solvingtheimpossible.com" genealogy website was launched. It also included a section on children with autism in which Ray could continue sharing creativity insights with those less fortunate.