Melissa Reali-Elliott interviewed Nabeel Mahmood, co-founder and CEO of Nomad Futurist and managing director of the Nomad Futurist Foundation. In this video Q&A, Mahmood shares his insightful futurist perspective on the shifting patterns in how we learn and the new path to education we need to adopt to meet the challenge of training the next generation.

Mission Critical: Tell me a little about what are you doing with your foundation and how are you focusing on the importance of digital infrastructure education? What are you hoping to achieve with the foundation?

Mahmood: How we started was to demystify technology for the younger generation, as well as people that are currently in transition, because we see that there's going to be a human capital deficit that's going to be massive as technology becomes second nature to all of us. And then there's also this generational gap. As we age, it's not necessarily very easy to, you know, buy into all the tech that's available from applications to interfaces and collaboration tools. So our idea really was to demystify that technology, whereby it's, you know, a level of comfort for people to say, “OK, I'm willing to take the risk. I'm willing to try it out. And, if it doesn't work, then, you know, go back to my old ways of doing it.” But it was also to encourage them to come into our space to potentially address that human capital deficit that we're getting ready for. The other thing is that I found is that if you're not passionate about something, it becomes a job, and then you're not going to be the change agent — you're just going to get into line and do what others have been doing. So, we need that level of innovation as we progress. And that can only come by giving people the opportunity, the exposure, the experience, and potentially education as well.