“Where the Magic Happens": New ASAP Board Member Nicole Colwell Brings Fresh Perspective

As we look ahead to the dawn of a new year, and as ASAP’s new president and CEO, Nicole Boston, CAE, hits the ground running, we welcome another Nicole to the ASAP community: Nicole Colwell, executive vice president and chief alliance officer of the PraSaga Foundation, who has just joined ASAP’s Board of Directors.

Colwell brings nearly 30 years’ experience in the tech world to the table, having worked at GE Digital, HP, and Avaya, among others, and more recently she’s gotten in on the ground floor of a relatively new area. I asked her to tell me a little about the PraSaga Foundation, and some of her other endeavors.

“PraSaga is launching a layer-one blockchain—meaning it’s the foundation that applications are built upon,” she explained. “It is a foundation based out of Zug, Switzerland, which is Crypto Valley, and very much like the Linux Foundation, it’s providing available source technology. It is a not-for-profit model, so that also is an interesting model to work with, coming from the corporate space where everything is for-profit. So [I’m] building out a new alliance program, an ecosystem really, for a foundation dealing with emerging technology, and something that is still prelaunch—it’s a really interesting space to be in.”

Jumping into a Role, Learning on the Job

Colwell said that while alliances have always been part of her world, her role at PraSaga is of a different order—which is how she connected with ASAP.

“Throughout my career I’ve been involved in strategic alliances and partnerships, mainly while I was running major deals,” she said. “I’d almost always have some kind of major partner involved in these big IT outsourced deals in particular. It wasn’t until I joined GE Digital that I took on the specific role of heading up alliances, and now at PraSaga as chief alliance officer building the alliance ecosystem. In the corporate world you jump into these roles, you take on the responsibilities—that’s not an area where you go through a formalized training. You learn on the job—which is great experience. But I said, ‘I want to be part of a professional community—where I can get involved with my peers, where I can learn from others who are doing this. Something a little more structured and professional.’”

Bringing New Perspectives to and from “Tech’s Wild West”

Her new role demanded it—as did the relatively new area she’s working in.

“Entering into the Web 3 space [aka Web 3.0, the latest, more decentralized iteration of the World Wide Web, built on blockchain], it’s very immature and often referred to as ‘tech’s wild west,’” she said. “With my background, that’s something I wanted to bring to this space, a different level of professionalism and maturity. I found that being part of an association like this would be a good thing for me in my personal development—also being around people who are a bit more structured and professional in what they’re doing, and to bring some of those best practices forward into this new area of technology.”

But what does she bring to the ASAP board and the broader member community?

“I hope that I will bring in a different perspective,” she said. “I’ve worked with quite a few companies and observed the way they handle partnerships and alliances. Right now, dealing with Web 3, blockchain, crypto, AI—what I’d love to see is for more people from those industries to get involved with ASAP, and ASAP to get involved with more people from those industries. Because I think there is a huge opportunity to up-level—especially in the emerging technology space—the role of partnerships and alliances. There’s definitely a misconception in that world about what an alliance partnership is.”

Given such misconceptions, ASAP’s guiding principles can play a role in assisting collaborations in the still-evolving Web 3 space, Colwell said.

“It’s so much more valuable to form these types of relationships, and to do it properly,” she said. “I have seen where things have gone awry, where they thought they had an alliance partnership, they made all these flashy announcements—but no contracts in place, no ‘how are we going to work together?’ So I think being able to elevate this vertical comes with putting those standards in place, and it will elevate the people in this space too, because they’re coming in with best practices, they’re coming in knowing how to do this properly, and it’s not the ‘wild west.’”

“This Is About All of Us”

Colwell brings another important perspective as well: a focus on empowering women as entrepreneurs, and promoting diversity throughout the corporate world.

“I’ve been in tech for almost 30 years,” she acknowledged. “Many times I’m the only woman at the table. That’s OK—I have four brothers, that’s nothing new for me! But one of the things that has been exciting is seeing more women starting up new companies and really taking the lead in being at the forefront of emerging technology in particular, because that’s my world.

"In the world of alliances too I’m seeing more women getting involved and finding this a really great career option and opportunity. It’s exciting to see Nicole [Boston] coming in as CEO, and it’s a new day, a new phase for ASAP. I think there can be opportunities for us to create some spaces that are not just women-focused, but focused on diversity. And bringing men into the conversation—allyship is so important, and advocates are so important. This is about all of us: to have diversity and differences of opinion and viewpoint, and different background and experience—I think it [leads] to a very well rounded organization.”

Opportunities Beyond the Walls

Colwell sees the future as bright for ASAP—if we can envision the possibilities that are out there.

“I believe that ASAP has a huge opportunity for growth, and I would love to see more tech involvement in ASAP,” she said. “I believe there are huge benefits for the association, but also for the tech industry. I’d also like to see it expand outside of those walls. I’ve been talking to many solopreneurs—people who are leaving the corporate world, starting their own businesses—they’re starting to really understand the value of having strategic alliances, and some of them have big corporate partners.

“That’s another great opportunity to expand the appeal of ASAP beyond pharma, med device, tech—I think there’s so many others that could take advantage of this. No matter what industry, I think you can learn something new from the others. I would love to see more community interaction. That’s the other thing—besides get-togethers and some of the programming, how can we communicate with each other on a more regular basis? Because that’s where the real learning happens, and that’s where the magic happens.”

At ASAP, echoing our newest board member, and from our new president and CEO and our community outward, we’re looking forward to a magical new year!