🌟 Nathaniel Flick - ENFJ, SDG 5 & 16
💻 Connect:
🔗 Website: https://nathanielflick.com/
📫 Email: hello@nathanielflick.com
💌 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanielflick/
🎸 Location: Lyttelton, New Zealand
Personality Type: ENFJ
Favourite SDGs: #5 Gender Equality | #16 Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions
🎵 THE GROOVE BEHIND THE SCENES
Nathaniel Flick describes himself as the bass player who holds the groove together. He is not the one in the spotlight, but the one making everyone else sound good. For him, music has always been about connection and rhythm. “People think, oh, you’re a musician, you must love the spotlight. It’s more about making people feel good and bringing them together,” he says.
His relationship with the bass started early. At home as a child, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue was often playing. He was drawn to the deep tones and started experimenting by ear on the family piano. Later, when his twin brother took up guitar, Nathaniel chose bass - “because no one else was.” That decision would shape his life, teaching him to listen more than perform, and to value the spaces between sounds as much as the notes themselves.
🌍 ADVENTURE AND THE ART OF BALANCE
A digital designer by profession and a creative at heart, Nathaniel and his family sold their belongings in 2015 and set out on a two-year journey around the world. With two children aged six and nine, they became digital nomads before the term was commonplace. They travelled through Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Belgium and beyond while house-sitting, working remotely, and home schooling the kiddos.
“It was my wife’s dream, and I just went all in,” he shares. “The hardest part was thinking, how can I be in this beautiful place and still work? But once I found balance, it became a dream.” He would work from 5 to 10 a.m., teach the kids until early afternoon, and spend the rest of the day exploring wherever they were based that month.
That experience reshaped his view of work and discipline. He learned to focus without music (“It distracts me because I start analyzing it”) and to simplify his daily goals to three clear tasks. “I used to have lists that trapped me. Now I write down three things the night before. If I get through those, I feel accomplished.”
🧭 VALUES IN ACTION: EQUALITY AND DESIGN
When asked to choose his top Sustainable Development Goals, Nathaniel didn’t hesitate: SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, and SDG 5 - Gender Equality.
“Justice jumps out at me,” he says. “And not just gender equality but equality across the board. I walk through life thinking I can learn something from everyone, no matter what their circumstance.”
Working in the tech and design industry, he’s seen how homogeneity limits innovation. “Design and software are still male-dominated,” he explains. “But we’re seeing change. More women entrepreneurs are emerging, and investors are finally noticing.”
He champions inclusive design, thinking deeply about who uses the things he builds and how they experience them. One of his favourite projects was for Good Shepherd New Zealand, an organization supporting women facing domestic violence and financial stress. He helped design a site with a “Safe Exit” button - a single click that closes the page and opens two neutral tabs, protecting users from potential danger. “It’s about safety and dignity in design,” he says. “One button can carry so much meaning.”
🎸 CREATIVE PROCESS & LEGACY
Beyond digital design, Nathaniel is a musician and writer currently working on his first book - an exploration of music, history, and the mystery of bass. The research has taken him from modern bands back to Sumerian civilizations, where music was used for ceremony and peace-making. “It’s one of the oldest instruments we have evidence for,” he says. “The bass has always been about grounding and connection.”
He uses visual mapping tools like Miro to structure ideas and balances research with intuition. “The book is really about why I love bass. It’s not about selling something - it’s about understanding why this sound feels so human.”
A fan of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, Nathaniel credits the book with helping him overcome creative perfectionism. “It taught me to get through the crap first. I used to stop myself because something wasn’t perfect. Now I see that creation comes through doing, not waiting.”
💡 TECH, AI & THE HUMAN ELEMENT
Nathaniel has lived through the evolution of technology - from print to web to AI. Yet his focus remains the same: people. “Every wave of technology asks us the same question: how do we use this to help humans thrive?”
He sees AI as a tool to amplify human creativity rather than replace it. “I don’t want AI to do my art. I want it to do my chores so I can do more art.” As a designer who codes, he uses AI to prototype faster, test iterations, and spark ideas without losing the human touch.
🪴 WHAT GROUNDING LOOKS LIKE
Like many creatives, Nathaniel balances digital work with physical projects to stay grounded. He’s been renovating his weatherboard home, painting, gardening, and learning patience from slow craft. “When you fix a wall or paint a house, you see it. There’s feedback. Digital work doesn’t always give you that.”
For him, creating - whether a song, a book, or a website - is about legacy and learning. “It’s not ego. It’s just asking, what do I have to show for my experience on this planet?”
✨ THE PATH FORWARD
As a father, designer, writer and musician, Nathaniel is constantly weaving his skills into new forms of connection. He imagines a future where sound design, UX design, and storytelling intersect to create meaningful human experiences. “I want to help people take the first step - see what’s possible - and feel that they belong.”
True to his ENFJ nature, Nathaniel thrives in the space between logic and emotion, technology and art, structure and soul. Every note he plays, every line he writes, and every interface he designs is a conversation about what it means to be human.