The oppressor and the oppressed, the colonizer and the colonized, Nick has explored the million ways the cells in his body represent the love between seemingly opposed worlds.

As Walt Whitman put it, each of us contains multitudes.

The leader capable of sitting with the complexity, paradoxical nature, and infinite meaning each of our stories holds is the leader that begins to know in their bones how to practice the empathy, compassion, and inclusiveness needed to serve the future workforce.

The future people keep talking about. A future where instead of a dominant culture and a racial majority we co-exist with many cultures and bodies represented in every seat of authority we encounter. Nick grew up in that future.

It’s in Queens.

Nick’s world was one where he could take diversity for granted, so much so that this bubble got popped when he moved to Boston for college.

Nick never stopped being a
Stoop sittin & Two MTA bus to get to school takin’
Queens Center Mall hangin’
Shea Stadium subway series turnstile jumpin’
Mister Softee chasin,
Where Spider-Man grew up livin’
Kid from Queens.

These were Nick’s first lessons about what inclusive, global innovation looks like, on-the-ground and in-the-field. It is adaptive, empathetic, and creative by necessity.

And Nick carried these lessons with him. He got trained at Innosight, a world-leading innovation strategy firm founded by Clayton Christensen, creator of disruptive innovation theory. He learned to speak the language of boardrooms and whiteboards. And eventually, Nick was facilitating culture shift work for global brands in Sydney, Madrid, New Delhi, London, and New York. Domestically Nick’s led organization-wide shifts to ways of working that are more decentralized, emphasize more freedom and enable more agility than their more bureaucratic and centralized cousins.

Nick has navigated many miles of the transformation journey and learned what it means to create the conditions for what wants to emerge.

Next time you talk to Nick, ask him what he learned from his Master’s research in ‘the role of intuition at the fuzzy front end of innovation.’

Nick knows what it means to make a literal impact.

Nick’s first job out of undergrad was as a National Team Player for the Philippines Rugby team. While it was a short stint, he learned a lot. Things like: 90% of high-impact performance comes from balanced discipline between pre-match training and deep dedication to rest & recovery.

Modern organizations have entire systems at the individual, interpersonal, team, function, and org levels dedicated to enhancing worker productivity. But When it comes to broad patterns of worker burnout, it’s something that’s left up to workers to navigate an often complex set of benefits and mixed messages about “managing their time”.

The organization of the future needs self-renewing systems that take the entire performance equation into the picture.

Nick has a broad set of ‘in-the-field’ experiences for what makes growth and top performance happen. He’s spent 15+ years working with leaders to navigate this balance at brands like Nationwide, P&G, AT&T, Eli Lilly, Kroger, GE, the WHO, and FedEx.

Nick sought out leaders exploring what brings out the best in organizations and found the incredible team at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. There he learned that:

Organizations can be strengths-based, appreciative, life-affirming and platforms for human flourishing.

With a certification in Executive Coaching & Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Nick’s journey has focused on the intersection of regenerative design, culture, embodiment, laboratory practice, and social movements to better understand what accomplishing a vision for radical change while staying whole will really take.

Kapwa Leadership is for all of you who have been told you are too anything.

Nick was born 12lbs 1oz. The largest baby in the maternity ward at the time, he was born into bigness.

For most of his childhood and into his early teens, Nick’s bigness was a GREAT thing to those around him. The biggest player on the field, the grandchild with the biggest appetite, the tallest player to get rebounds, and the last kid in the classroom line to “keep an eye” and help the teacher.

It also meant that the world, and mostly adults, grew Nick up quick. Nick was seen through a lens that was more mature, more ready, more capable of doing the hard things even if Nick didn’t feel that way necessarily.

Then, one day, Nick was told he was too big. Too aggressive, too physical, too direct, too loud, too fat, taking up too much space, too extra.

He internalized that for a long time. He started folding himself inward, talking with a softer voice and taking up less space.

Today, Nick moves his 6’ 4” 300+ lb former rugby-playing, melanated, half-Filipino American, half-European American body with purpose.

For the leaders who have been caught in the balancing act of being “too” or “not enough” anything, it is your responsibility to take up space the way that feels right for you. Without leaders like you ready to inhabit your version of bigness, the visions needed to correct our global trajectory will have no chance of moving forward.

Nick shares this story for the people who had to leave parts of themselves behind to be a ‘culture fit’ at work. For people who might be grieving that they’ve forgotten parts of themselves (a way of talking, dressing, and/or thinking). For people who folded under the nearly unbearable pressure to assimilate into the norm. This space is for you.

There are our elders and our olders. Aging alone does not make one an elder. Elder’s, in the words of Vine Deloria Jr. of the Standing Rock Sioux, are “repositories of cultural and philosophical knowledge” and are “among the most important resources for any [culture].”

The first elders in Nick’s life were his grandparents, Emilio Lacsamana Pineda, Catalina Pascua Pineda, Gillis Pratt Jr., and Mary Daeffler Pratt. Each ensured the transmission of traditions and values that have been taproots for Nick’s sense of identity and direction.

Rather than an “out with the old, in with the new” mindset, the transition organizations have before them will instead by guided by the wisdom and courage of a multi-generational coalition of visionaries committed to radically reimagining society.

Today, Nick’s studies continue with the Center for Babaylan Studies (CfBS), founded by Leny Stroebel and Lily Mendoza, to uplift the wisdom of Indigenous living traditions of the Philippines toward the pursuit of Indigenous sovereignty, individual and community healing, justice, and liberation.

Before this, Nick’s growth journey was personally stewarded by Larissa Conte, Julie Engel, Cheryl Kiser, James Ruberg, Fernande Raine, and Gita Bellin.

Constantly, we are being shaped by and shaping our interconnections. This is the real work of navigating dynamic change and transformation.