Nicole Casanova is the CEO, visionary-extraordinaire, and the heart behind Shift. She started her days in a Jewish/Italian family in sunny Miami, Florida. After a stint as honor student, president of this and that, and Miami Beach party girl, Nicole went off to study Communications at Florida State University. From there the eternally driven Ms. Casanova trekked out to Boulder, Colorado to get her Masters in Integrated Marketing Communications by 22. Because her Master's thesis (this was 1995 when her professors wondered if she'd go door to door signing people up for the World Wide Web) was on Targeted Marketing on the Web, Nicole's natural next step was to seek fortune and challenge in San Francisco's world of Internet business. She spent the next six years doing Business Development and selling Internet Advertising for Homestore, Lycos and Mypoints.
Fortune smiled upon her and all three companies went public, the stocks climbed and the Venture Capitalists increased their ad budgets. In one year Nicole exceeded her quota by $6.5 million dollars while her bonus was 20%. She had so much business that she didn't have time to put in her $10k plus expense reports or make sure her commissions where correct. She secretly hired an assistant to help her work more than 80 hours a week so she could gather more of the contracts and dollars that seemed to be falling from the sky. At 25 her portfolio proudly stated, baby you're a millionaire. Life was good. Many would agree, Nicole Casanova was the picture of success.
Nicole Casanova was also really good at feeling not good enough. Do you see the correlation between star student and sales person? She sought all she could outside herself to feel good enough. At the same point, Nicole was introduced to A Course in Miracles and began studying the concepts of self-awareness. She became more and more aware that she couldn't blame her destructive ways on her belief that she was a "victim of the world." Once she finally got that she was responsible and that her motto, "Everything in excess" was less than healthy, Nicole recognized that she had another calling, to convey these same lessons to as many people as possible. The voice grew louder and louder until she left the Internet and her hectic life in San Francisco to answer that call.
Three plus years later it showed up as a company called Exponential Growth. The core product, Shift, is a board game that helps people become more aware of why they behave the way they do. The game teaches people that their perceptions are their reality and that only they have the power to shift their thoughts from Fear to Love. Shift's message translates equally well to friends, families, partners and even support groups, corporations and organizations. Shift's mission is to reach as many people as possible and remind them that they are loved.
Nicole currently lives among the stunning mountains of Boulder, CO and is continually thankful for the journey that has brought her here and the excitement of the path ahead. She lives and loves her three dogs that total less than 25 pounds and her husband, whose name, ironically, means change in Korean.
