NXTLVL Experience Design

Ep.19 The Noble Cause of Transformative Tech with Nichol Bradford CEO of the Willow Group, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Transformative Technology Lab

Episode Summary

Nichol Bradford believes that "there is no nobler use of technology than to bring peace to the minds of Mankind..." She was an executive responsible for operating World Of Warcraft in China who went on a retreat, found a sense of inner peace and had moment of insight that transformed her and a belief about the way technology could be used to support human thriving. She is Executive Director and Co-founder of the Transformative Technology Lab, The Transformative Technology Conference. Host David Kepron and Nichol Bradford talk about transformative tech and how she using it to foster well-being in people across the globe.

Episode Notes

About Nichol Bradford :

Nichol’s Profile: linkedin.com/in/nicholbradford

Websites:

finderscourse.com  (Company Website)

mskincorporated.com  (Book Website)

transtechlab.org  (Company Website)

Phone: 415-413-6521 (Work)

Email: nichol.bradford@gmail.com

Twitter: Nichol_Bradford

Title: Executive Director and co-founder of the Transformative Technology Lab, Conference

Bio: My purpose is to weave wellbeing, technology and science into new ground and practical possibilities for all of us. My mission is to empower humans to grow and expand by creating or curating new visions, opportunities, and tech enabled tools for all. I do this by investing in founders who build wellbeing tech through a global non-profit.

I co-founded and built Transformative Tech.org, a global ecosystem dedicated to educating, gathering, and activating wellbeing tech founders, investors, and innovators. Today, we have members in 72 countries and 450 cities and our tentpole events online or in person attract 1K+ attendees. We help founders leveraging exponential tech for mental and emotional wellbeing, social and emotional wellness, and human potential and performance find feedback, funding, and friends. We help investors find the best wellbeing tech founders and companies. I help corporate innovators understand and apply these powerful tools.

Prior to Transformative Tech, I served as senior interactive entertainment executive with responsibility for strategy, operations and marketing for major brands that include: Activision Blizzard, Disney, and Vivendi. Highlights included operating World of Warcraft and all of Blizzard Entertainment’s properties in China as well as holding a key role on the Vivendi Games team responsible for the Activision-Blizzard merger -- an $18B deal and an industry defining event. I believe these worlds will merge and one day games will become powerful tools of human transformation -- and I am working towards this goal today.

I speak extensively on Human Transformation, Transformative Tech, the Future of Health, Work, and Human Excellence, and Flourishing Cities. I am a lecturer at Stanford University, have an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, and attended Singularity University’s Global Solutions program. I am a novelist and have written The Sisterhood, a work of transformative Afro-futuristic fiction. Outside of work, my two favorite activities are meditation and combat sports.

Episode Intro:

When I was growing up, watching Star Trek was a weekly happening with my brothers and father. 

From the early years of campy sci-fi tech to all of the years and iterations afterwards, Star Trek kept my believing in the power of technology and the opportunity, should we choose to embrace it, ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before.’

I love science fiction, and today science and technology is less fiction than a reality that is fundamentally shaping our human experience. What we can do today, what we have come to understand about our selves and the universe in the past decade, has been on an exponential growth curve that is reaching a near vertical trajectory. 

Equally, I see the inherent challenges with humans who are not particularly well adapted to meet the circumstances of exponential rates of change. Our biology and neurophysiology weren’t made for the change of pressure we are now under. This has consequences on us personally and as a global community.

I’ve taken Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction courses, I meditate, create art to get into a flow space and have done emergency shavasana’s from time to time. And, I’ve used technology to help me along the way to transform.

Nichol Bradford Nichol Bradford is also fascinated by human potential and technology. She is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Transformative Technology Lab. Prior to becoming a leader in Transformative Technology, Bradford was a senior executive in video games with responsibility for strategy, operations and marketing for major brands including operating World of Warcraft China.

Nichol is a graduate of Singularity University GSP15, has an MBA from Wharton School of Business in Strategy, and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Houston. 

She speaks regularly on Transformation, Exponential Technology, and Culture at conferences like Singularity University’s Global Summit, Exponential Medicine, Katapult Future Fest, Wisdom 2.0 and more.

I’ve invite Nichol to NXTLVL to share her extraordinary, and exponential, trajectory through the world of technology to now be one of the leaders in the industry. Someone who believes that “There is no nobler use of technology than to bring peace to the minds of mankind…”

And...With that I welcome Nichol Bradford...

 

About David Kepron: linkedin.com/in/david-kepron-9a1582b

Websites: 

https://www.davidkepron.com  (personal website)

vmsd.com/taxonomy/term/8645  (Blog)

Email: david.kepron@NXTLVLexperiencedesign.com

Twitter: DavidKepron