Name: Nicholas de Wolff
Born: Geneva, Switzerland
Currently in: Burbank, CA
Occupation: Business and Marketing Strategist (roughly translated from the English “always interested in exciting new opportunities to learn.”)
Height: 6′ 0″
Weight: 192 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Languages: English, French, Portuguese, some Spanish.
Organizations that I support: The Talented Youth (Founding Chair, Advisory Board); American Lung Association (member, Board of Directors’ Revenue Generation Committee, California); City of Burbank Sustainability Commission (Chair, Mobility and Urban Design Committee); Producers Guild of America (co-founder, New Media Council); Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Interactive Media Peer)
Professional Background: Theatre then M&E then Tech. Directing, producing, writing. Teaching, coaching, film production, business strategy, marketing, publicity, interactive production, creative strategy, brand management, social media. Technicolor, Thomson, RCA, SAG, NFFTY, USFS, Greenview Arts Center, Goodman Theater, KCRW, NPR, Los Angeles Performing Arts Festival, McKinsey & Company, Warner Bros, Walt Disney Company, Universal, Grass Valley, MPC, Activision, Aramis, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Calvin Klein, Columbia Tristar, Dep, Disney Channel, FashionActs, FX Networks, Intel, Jim Henson Company, Johnson & Johnson, Kirin, Lexus.
Professional Summary: I have a strong personal and professional interest in the ways social media is changing how people and organizations connect and communicate, and I’ve worked with companies of all sizes across North America and Europe. Building companies and brands, in both the commercial and non-profit sectors, I’ve been responsible for launching, relaunching, refining, or otherwise helping to improve the market position of some of the most well-known brands in the world, and some not so-well-known but just as compelling!
Until recently, I served as a Chief Marketing Officer at Technicolor (formerly Thomson), where I oversaw strategic and tactical aspects of the Group’s technology market position in the U.S, Europe, and Asia. My responsibilities included business strategy, branding, Internet, events, promotions, and public relations. Previously, I was VP and Group Creative Director of Dream Theatre, a leading digital production studio. There, I directed some of the earliest promotional campaigns on the Web for clients including Disney, the Jim Henson Company and Sony, and my work received Promax awards for creative direction and interactive production.
Concurrent with these ventures, I’ve served as Founding Chair of the National Film Festival for Talented Youth’s Advisory Board; Founding Governor of the Producers Guild of America’s New Media Council; member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and advisor to such bodies as the CMO Institute, the Charter High School for the Arts, the American Lung Association, and the Business Marketing Association.
In 2009, I was elected to serve as a Sustainability Commissioner for the City of Burbank, driving policy on issues relating to the environment, human capital, transportation, energy, and more. I was subsequently appointed to lead the City’s related subcommittees on Transportation and Urban Design.
Other Interests: literature, innovation, emerging media, theatre, cooking, photography, social media, sustainability, business strategy and creativity.
Random facts: I spent the first 5 years of my life living in Portugal. I learned to speak English, French and Portuguese at roughly the same time, and continue to mix words from all 3 languages whenever I speak with my parents. I’ve written and been quoted in a diverse array of articles and reviews on business strategy, media topics and marketing trends (with particular focus on social media), in a variety of publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Produced By Magazine, CNN Radio, Screen Actor Magazine, and The Networker, among others. I have little patience for people who are more interested in keeping their jobs, than doing their jobs. I’ve been hosting a monthly literary salon for nearly 20 years now, and find the experience recharges my creative batteries (and the fact that it’s always accompanied by a pot-luck dinner feast sure helps!). I watch way too much television and am addicted to the Internet. I love meeting people who can change my mind. My family is owned by a Great Dane/Lab mix that we rescued from the local shelter.
Blogs: IP
Speaker Profile: Speakermix.com
Favorite Music: William Galison, Louis Prima, Kate Bush, Dianne Reeves, Gal Costa,Vinicius Cantuária, Paul Kelly, Dinah Washington, Jeremy Enigk, The Polyphonic Spree, Laura Fygi, Genesis, Ibrahim Ferrer, Jamiroquai,ABBA, Scissor Sisters, Zero 7, James Taylor, Julia Fordham, Moby, No Doubt, Prince, Garbage, Glenn Miller, Badmarsh & Shri, Hank Jones,Ryuichi Sakamoto, Thelonious Monk, Madeleine Peyroux, David Byrne,Madredeus, Deacon Blue, Beth Orton, Bach, Mozart, Dirty Vegas,Chopin, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Jane Siberry, Prefab Sprout, Milton Nascimento, António Chainho, M.I.A., Lisa Stansfield, Max De Castro,The Rolling Stones, Asian Dub Foundation, Sade, Etta James, Caetano Veloso, Billie Holiday, George Michael, The Corrs, Celso Fonseca, Jondi & Spesh, Debussy, Delibes, Arakatuba, DJ Cheb i Sabbah, Gilberto Gil,Peter Gabriel, India.Arie, Frank Sinatra, Nitin Sawhney, Lena Horne,Albita, Amália Rodrigues, John Lee Hooker, Chet Baker, Elliott Smith,Ultravox, Philip Bailey, Sinéad O’Connor, Cesária Évora, Annie Lennox,Basement Jaxx, Dick Hyman, Tanita Tikaram, Benny Goodman, Marvin Gaye, Everything but the Girl, Luscious Jackson, The Chieftains, Carl Orff, Baaba Maal, Aftershock, Edith Piaf, Tears for Fears, Stevie Wonder, Me’Shell Ndegéocello, The Cranberries, Rufus Wainwright,Cornershop, Alison Moyet, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Alicia Keys,Earth, Wind & Fire, Suzanne Vega, Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel,Fatboy Slim, Simply Red, David Gray, Gorillaz, The Eagles, Jill Scott,Blondie, Styx, OK Go, Imogen Heap, Nick Mancini
Favorite Reading: Stieg Larsson, Allegra Goodman, Umberto Eco, Frank Herbert, Richard Adams, Maurice Sendak, Paulo Coelho, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Grisham, Christopher Paolini, Dr. Seuss, Jose Saramago, Hunter S. Thompson, Saul Bellow, Raymond Queneau, William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Ursula K. Le Guin, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Daniel Defoe, Philip Pullman, A.A. Milne, Amy Tan, Herman Melville, Stephen King, Kenneth Grahame, Aldous Huxley, James Clavell, George Orwell, Jean M. Auel, William Golding, Toni Morrison, Evelyn Waugh, Stephen King, John Steinbeck, William Makepeace Thackeray, Pamela L. Travers, Joseph Heller, Robert Louis Stevenson, E.B. White, Homer, Miguel de Cervantes , John Irving, Douglas Adams, Mary Shelley, J.K. Rowling, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen, Frank Baum, Anne Rice, Victor Hugo, C.S. Lewis, Alexandre Dumas, E.B. White, Mark Twain, Emily Bronte, Roald Dahl, Charlotte Bronte, Margaret Atwood, Randy Pausch, Kazuo Ishiguro, A.S. Byatt, Julian Barnes, Gustave Flaubert, Umberto Eco, Vikram Seth, John Updike, Michael Ondaatje, J.M. Barrie, Salman Rushdie, Alexandre Dumas, Sun Tzu, Don Marquis, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anne Frank, Raymond Khoury, Shel Silverstein, John Lucht, George Orwell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Harper Lee, J.D. Salinger
