Nick Bowden

Nick Bowden has challenged the community engagement status quo since he was 12. In eighth grade, he participated in a competition to design a “city of the future.” He discovered that to be determine how people of the future might live, it was important to engage the people of today about what they thought. In college Nick learned that there was actually a profession for creating a mesh between people and physical places—urban planning. Nick’s first urban planning role took him to Phoenix, Arizona, where he spent a day traversing the city noting the number and location of shady spots—an episode that caused him to question traditional community engagement methods. Nick later joined a large urban planning consultancy, Olsson Associates, where he met Nathan Preheim, future MindMixer co-founder. Based on a series of town hall meetings to source community insight, Nick realized that despite organizations wanting to engage with communities, they couldn’t—the tool was broken. It was at this moment he and Nathan came up with the MindMixer concept. In 2009, Nick left Olsson and co-founded the urban planning and consulting firm Community ReDesigned. Nick grew the firm over the next two years and it was acquired in late 2011, giving Nick the break he needed to move over to MindMixer full time.  Three years later, Nick has taken MindMixer through its Series-B funding, and the company now helps more than 400 clients across the country better engage with communities using a modern and efficient online platform.