I need to share the story of our Center (Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design) to donors and academic and corporate partners all the time. Nick’s input on my presentation made a big difference. His suggestions for replacing wordy material with more visuals paid off immediately. I gave my revised presentation to a group from overseas who did not speak English too well, yet they understood what I needed to convey. Nick’s guidance has helped me minimize the language gap between academia and industry, allowing me to develop new partnerships.
Youseph Yazdi, PhD –Johns Hopkins University
Executive Director Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design
Program Director Johns Hopkins Coulter Translational Partnership
Technical Director Accelovate! A Partnership with USAID
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We hired Nick to better prepare our project leads for quarterly reviews with IV Lab’s board of directors. He helped our leads identify and make their points understood using PowerPoint. Nick showed the leads how to communicate technically dense information using techniques that minimize visual clutter and emphasize the takeaways. The project leads consider Nick a valuable resource for communicating high impact information to an executive audience. Time spent with Nick is a value-add to the work we do.
Debra Peat -Program Management, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory
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I have to give an important presentation to our board of directors quarterly and Nick has been my go to person come review time. He has helped me make huge improvements to my visual and oral presentation. Nick is especially good at helping me take the technical details I deal with daily, judge which ones are important to include, and turn them into a clear message that let’s our board of directors know we are helping them achieve their vision. It’s been great to have Nick as a resource.
Shawn McGuire –Project Manager, Intellectual Ventures Laboratory
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I worked with Nick in April and May of 2015 when he helped my team prepare for an important pitch for funding. Nick worked with us to ensure that our message came across clear and with the right level of energy that was appropriate for the audience and setting. Through Nick’s help, we were successful in getting our first round of funding which was essential in moving our business forward.
Christopher Thompson –Entrepreneur, Nocturnal Brewing
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Nick provided my partner and me the right presentation coaching exactly when we needed it the most – securing our initial grant funding. I can honestly say Nick’s advice is quite literally valuable.
Derek Streat –Entrepreneur, Co-Founder & CEO, CSATS, Inc.
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Nick came in to the Buerk Center to meet with a handful of graduate students who were working on tech commercialization projects. All I can say is that their final presentations were exceptional—and they were extremely grateful for Nick’s advice and guidance.
Connie Bourassa-Shaw –Director, Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Washington, Foster Business School
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I worked with Nick on a presentation to our corporate board of directors. Nick brought a great perspective and insight as to how to make both my visual and spoken presentations concise and focused. He challenged my assumptions about what I thought would be important to my audience and the result was one of the best presentation experiences I’ve had. I strongly recommend Nick as someone who can help you effectively craft and send your message.
Tim Smith –Vice President of Engineering & Design, SRAM Corporation
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Nick reviewed a power point presentation I had to present at an international scientific conference. He provided excellent coaching and suggestions not only on the content of the slide deck, but also on effective communication of the material to an audience comprised of both technical and nontechnical individuals. His professionalism and competency were second to none and highly appreciated.
Marcelo Aspiras, PhD -Senior Scientist, Philips Oral Healthcare, Inc.
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Nick has a unique ability to effectively communicate complex scientific concepts to a diverse audience. In his workshop at Rarecyte, Nick gave our scientists great suggestions on how to step back from the technical details and create high level summaries and simple messages that the audience can relate to. He also provided wonderful insights on focusing the audience’s attention on data and using it to tell a story.
Jacki Stilwell, PhD -Principal Scientist/Research Manager, Rarecyte, Inc.
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Nick has been working with our students on their presentations to our corporate sponsors for years. His methods are simple and easy to apply and the results are amazing! Year after year, I have seen the students turn ineffective presentations into ones that are interesting, professional, and really highlighting what our students and department has to offer. And because of Nick, I’ve changed the presentations that I give at professional meetings. At a meeting last October the quality of my presentation stood out and I was the only one to get questions. People fully understood my work and then they were able to build on it with their questions. I’m grateful to him for that. Nick has always been easy to work with and has set an excellent example of professionalism for our students.
Teodora Shuman, PhD –Associate Professor & Chair, Dept of Mechanical Engineering, Seattle University
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Nick turns complex scientific information into something common audiences can understand. I was preparing for a business plan competition and Nick gave great guidance on what to say in my pitch that would resonate with my audience and help them understand my message. The result speaks for itself: we won the competition!
Brayden Olson –CEO, Recurrence, Inc.
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Nick has helped me, my former students, and my current colleagues by providing simple tools and techniques for planning and preparing effective presentations. His approach is unique, engaging, and relevant – and the results are immediate and impactful. You no longer need to be a graphic designer to prepare visually rich and informative slides. If you and your colleagues want your message understood and remembered by your audience, Nick is your guy.
Mike Larson –Director of Engineering Education, SRAM, LLC
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What amazing before-and-after results! Nick coached our UW graduate students who were developing a business recommendation for engineering and life science technologies. He provided immediately-applicable and highly-effective feedback resulting in outstanding presentations. Additionally, Nick had great follow-through with the organization of the various sessions. We’ll definitely bring him in for more coaching sessions!
Samantha Ogle –Assistant Director, University of Washington, Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship
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Nick helped me prepare a very personal remembrance speech (eulogy) about the most special person in my life… my late wife, who passed away in November, 2014. Preparing and delivering a eulogy, especially for someone so close to me, was challenging to say the least. I greatly valued Nick’s advice about both content and delivery. Nick offered constructive suggestions to improve my first draft, and then watched and recorded my practice delivery. His coaching helped make my delivery as comfortable and natural as possible under the circumstances. As challenging as delivering a eulogy for my late wife turned out to be, several attendees told me (even months afterwards) it was the most moving and effective eulogy they’d heard. Thank you, thank you Nick.
Tim Williams –Personal Financial Planner, Sound Passages Financial Advisors, LLC
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Nick helped me fine-tune and perfect my presentation to make it successful. His guidance helped me to have a better overall flow and understand my audience and how to speak to them. I recommend his help in developing effective presentations.
Kevin Bielawski –Graduate Research Assistant, University of Washington
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Nick helped me tremendously on how to start a simple but compelling introduction for my presentation delivered to business experts and potential investors. He has the capability of making complicated points simple and clear. As a non-native English speaker, this approach worked out perfectly for me. Nick also coached me on my presentation manner so that I turned out to be more confident than I had ever been when I was up on the stage. Nick’s competency proves that he is a valuable expert to be counted on.
Mingxuan (Karin) Li –MBA Candidate, University of Washington, Michael G. Foster School of Business
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Nick helped me hone a technical presentation for a business audience. When we met initially, he offered constructive feedback on ways to make the complicated scientific aspects of the technology more digestible, as well as ways that I could improve the visual aspects of the presentation and my talking points.
Nick then followed up by email and took the time to attend my final presentation- after which he offered me further feedback. Nick did more than help me to strengthen my presentation skills; his advice about ways to best utilize my voice and body language have helped me communicate more effectively overall.
Heather Lewis –Strategy, Planning and Partnerships Consultant, Social Venture Partners
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The biggest lessons I learned from Nick were how to break down complex high-tech jargon into simple slides that anyone can understand, and how to be succinct in making recommendations. As a research fellow presenting a business plan for a tech product to a mostly non-tech audience, these lessons were extremely valuable. Nick came up with the most creative ideas on how to effectively communicate using less text and more graphics. I received immense positive feedback for my presentation and I can say definitively that Nick’s ideas and suggestions contributed in no small part to this achievement.
Nneka Ezeabogu –MBA Candidate, University of Washington, Foster School of Business
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Nick has a high level ability to understand scientific concepts, simplify them, and communicate them to a wider audience and disseminate them. That’s a unique skill and certainly a unique demand in the market place whether it be science or pharma or labs – places that are doing technically sophisticated things that they’re trying to communicate to a wider audience that may not always have the depth of understanding of the technical side of what it is
Sean Sigmon –Healthcare Business Development Director, Oracle
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Nick is an excellent speaker coach, particularly effective with technical topics, but can coach speakers who are addressing any topic. He gives excellent pointers on slides and helps presenters organize their topic so information unfolds in an engaging way. I highly recommend working with Nick to improve your presentation skills.
Terri Butler PhD –Assistant Director, University of Washington, Michael G. Foster School of Business
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We’ve seen tremendous “before and after” with Nick’s participation in our Seattle U business plan competition. Students and alums come into the competition with great ideas and business models, and often lack a powerful, inspiring approach to tell their stories. Enter Nick!!! Firsthand, I’ve seen him bring fun, practical, engaging, REAL approaches to turning numbers, complicated info and verbiage, and plans into amazing, compelling pitches. I cannot say enough about how much of a difference he has made with Seattle U startups in this regard!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Nick!
Sue Oliver –Director, Albers Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center, Seattle University
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Nick joined Colgate with an outstanding technical background and capability for innovative research. He is an out of the box thinker that goes beyond the established approach to identify technology leads and product improvements. He has tremendous ability to analyze a complex subject and present it in a way that even non-scientists can understand it. His strong leadership and collaborative approach won the respect and friendship of his colleagues and allowed him to be a truly valuable asset to our team.
Tina Christopoulou –Vice President, R&D, Colgate Palmolive Co.
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Nick is very grounded in science, but he is a rare combination in that he can take that and apply what I’ll call the creative side of his brain. A lot of times you have either-or with scientists. They’re either creative or they’re good in science but they’re not both. This is where Nick really shines.
Nick doesn’t just work for the sake of work. He’s doing it because he thinks the work that he’s doing is going to have an impact beyond him. He is a caring individual who is very dedicated and committed. Once he’s on a project you can be sure that he is going to deliver what he’s promised.
Bill DeVizio –Vice President, Oral Care R&D, Colgate Palmolive Co.
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Nick helped us piece together the medical picture and the narrative we were carving out for the sales process for our genetic test products. The secondary application for what we were doing which was building the sales training program for our reps. They all needed to be trained and that involved a different way of thinking to get people who maybe don’t know that much about using genetics in the health care practice up to speed.
Nick’s clearly in the scientific and clinical side of the equation but he would understand very quickly how he could be of service to the people training and marketing the products. There’s a certain translation that has to happen for clinical people to wrap their head around it, and because Nick can go between both science and marketing worlds, he was very able to hear both sides and translate for us.
He was also very good at holding our organization accountable. I felt like I could trust him because he had a moral fiber that would alert us to when there’s a claim that’s kind of an “iffy” claim. He also had an understanding of legal ramifications of making certain claims that were questionable.
It takes a certain temperament to be able to work in the startup space. Nick was a calm in the storm. And his impact helped give us a baseline from which our entire marketing and sales program could operate.
I felt like we were both friends and colleagues so we were able to speak frankly to each other. So any time you can have that dynamic with your team members it builds loyalty and it helps when you’re dealing with finite resources to have a positive dynamic.
His skill set has applications beyond health care and medicine because it could really apply to anywhere in technology and science. Having the smarts to be able to operate at that level which requires you know an understanding of the technical side of a new project and the science behind it. You have to be able to navigate and understand the motivations behind each of those roles and how you can help, and that’s something he’s really good at.
Nick definitely lived up to all of my expectations.
Taylor Vignali –Marketing Director, Iverson Genetic Testing Services