President & Teaching Faculty
Nate lives the NewNorth core principle of whole-brain business thinking. It’s been the hallmark of his 30-plus-year career in some of the top design-related positions in the country. Let’s review the highlights:
Nate attended and later served as Provost of the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He co-founded TWISThink, a successful product design firm in Holland, Michigan. And, for 13 years, he held instrumental positions with the company that practically reinvented the interior of the automobile (Prince Corporation, later Johnson Controls, Holland, MI).
But beyond the stellar resume is a person. A mind. And a unique mind it is. In a conventional business setting where most folks deploy to either the right brained camp (design, marketing, and other “creatives”) or the left (accountants, CFO’s, and other “suits”), Nate has always been an intellectual Switzerland. Not picking sides, but moving comfortably between each camp, and, more importantly, often functioning within both simultaneously. It’s this “blurred-line” approach that Nate (and everyone at NewNorth Center) seeks to awaken within companies.
Such unorthodox alliances might fluster the average mucky-muck. But where others see potential cataclysm, Nate sees catalyst: the kind that sparks true breakthroughs in corporate cultures, leading to tangible improvements in profitability, as well as value for their customers.
