Nate Pelsma has always been interested in one question: how do you build the conditions where people can do their best work? It started forming early: Boy Scout troops, rowing teams, ropes courses. It has driven everything since.

That instinct formed early. As an Eagle Scout he learned something that became a founding philosophy: make sure the last person in the group feels encouraged and motivated. Not the first. The last.

At City Year he built a corporate volunteer platform from scratch and discovered something that would shape everything after. His job wasn't to lead the work. It was to structure it clearly enough that each person could lead themselves. The goal was never to be the person in charge. It was to build the conditions where everyone else could be.

What followed was a decade of building organizations in real time — errors and all. At Teach Plus, scaling from five to sixty staff, building the first layer of leadership and management as growth outpaced structure. At JMG, a different challenge: ninety to one hundred seventy people, middle management, matrix support, and the structural clarity that only scale demands.

The RTW chapter was the culmination. Six years as a board director, then stepping inside as Managing Director of Organizational Effectiveness and founding COO of the RTW Foundation — building an organization from scratch around a simple conviction: Innovation is the best medicine.

In 2020 Nate founded his practice — bringing everything that came before into a single focused offering. The same work, available to more leaders and organizations. Today at Thomas College, the work has found its fullest expression — teaching, consulting, coaching, and building across an ecosystem of leaders and organizations, each engagement informed by everything that came before.

Outside of work Nate is pretty much the same person. He tries to practice what he preaches.

He plays guitar, is learning piano, and joins pickup soccer games on weekends. He is deep into the seventh Harry Potter book with his son. His daughter has taught him more about contemporary dance than he ever expected. He loves a good conversation about ideas, futures, and what things mean — the kind that goes somewhere. He has an ongoing argument with himself about whether what he writes counts as poetry.

He grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and returns as often as he can. It still feels like home.