Nicholas de Wolff

Early Life and Work

de Wolff was born in Geneva, Switzerland on May 6, 1970. He spent the first 5 years of his life living in Portugal, where he studied at the Lycée Français Charles Lepierre. During the turbulent period of the country’s PREC, de Wolff and most of his family moved to London, England, where he transferred into the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle to continue his studies. After another 9 years in British boarding schools, de Wolff enrolled at Duke University, where he studied English Literature and was concurrently part of the school’s famed “Actor’s Sequence” Professional Actor Training Program, under Dr. Robert L. Hobbs.

de Wolff enjoyed a successful career as a writer, actor, and director - working in theater, film, and television, before being brought to Los Angeles to co-star in a play with British actress, Katy Manning. He was subsequently appointed Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Performing Arts Festival, and was responsible for launching the world's first immersive 3D online arts community: City Arts Project.

New Media Pioneer & Social Innovator

For the past 20 years, de Wolff has been deeply involved in New Media business ventures, including Internet, social media, M&E technologies, IP, and mobile communications.

de Wolff has 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, Screen Actor Magazine, and The Networker, among others. He is regularly sought after to speak to corporations and associations on emerging marketing trends and brand positioning challenges.

de Wolff served for several years as a Chief Marketing Officer at Technicolor (formerly Thomson), one of the world’s largest media and entertainment technology providers. While at Technicolor, de Wolff directed a review of - and implemented new initiatives in - the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility activity, launching a variety of new programs to heighten the firm’s attention to its environmental and community responsibilities, as a global sustainability steward. From there he was elected to serve on the Sustainability Commission for the City of Burbank (Media Capital of the World), where he was responsible for driving a concerted effort toward redefining municipal mobility and urban design efforts, to accommodate urban density shifts and alternative transportation options. In January 2010, he was elected Chair of the city's related subcommittees on Urban Design and Transportation. In January 2013, de Wolff was elected Chair of the Commission.

Previously, de Wolff was Vice President and Group Creative Director of Dream Theatre, a leading digital production studio. There, he oversaw some of the earliest promotional campaigns on the Web for clients including Disney, the Jim Henson Company and Sony. Many of the web productions he oversaw are considered groundbreaking in their use (and reverse engineering in some cases) of available technologies, and several received Promax awards for creative direction and interactive production.

de Wolff is a co-founder of the Producers Guild of America’s New Media Council, which published a landmark document in 2010 entitled "The Producers Guild of America New Media Code of Credits". He is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has served several times on the jury for the Primetime Emmy Awards. Additionally, he is a member of the advisory boards of the CMO Institute, the Charter High School for the Arts, National Film Festival for Talented Youth, American Lung Association, and the Business Marketing Association, as well as a founding member of the Digital Watermarking Alliance.

In December 2013, de Wolff was recruited by the State of Oregon to serve as inaugural Executive Director of its new digital innovation lab, Oregon Story Board, a 501-c6 organization that "develops opportunities for job creation, talent attraction, and the establishment of a collaborative community of storytelling innovators".