With the sudden death of his father,[2] he moved to Oshawa Ontario and attended O'Neill Collegiate and Vocational Institute, where he was the Poet Laureate in his final year of high school.
He attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he earned undergraduate degrees in history and political studies and a Master of Business Administration.
[10] Nanos has also been elected a Fellow and Chair of Board of the Canadian Research and Insights Council (CRIC),[11][12] and holds a Certified Management Consulting (CMC) designation.
At the beginning of his career, his firm conducted a controversial riding survey that predicted Peter Milliken (later to become the Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada), a relatively unknown Liberal federal candidate in the riding of Kingston and the Islands, would defeat senior Progressive Conservative Cabinet Minister Flora Macdonald in the 1988 Canadian federal election.
His analysis and insight have appeared in The Economist,[15][16] The Wall Street Journal,[17][18] Bloomberg News,[19][14] Reuters,[20][21] The Guardian,[22][23] the BBC[24][25] and all of Canada’s major media outlets.
[27] He is a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail with his monthly column, "Data Dive", and has a weekly segment on CTV News Channel, "Nanos on the Numbers",[27] which profiles the latest political, social, and business trends.
Nanos has been named one of the Top 100 most influential people in government and politics in Canada in 2021 by The Hill Times[30] and is a regular public speaker at conferences.
[41] Nanos currently serves on the Board of The Hellenic Initiative Canada,[42] a registered charity which funds programs in Greece that secure food for children and provide access to health care for all.