Tom Nickel is a teacher and new media explorer.

I summarized renal pathology as clearly as I could in my first serious writing job, with the Massachusetts Kidney Foundation. That led somehow to WGBH-TV where I wrote about the programs they produced there in Boston for the PBS network. I saw the early years of independent media and, twenty-five years later, of online teaching and learning.  I was finally certified as something when I received a PhD in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences from Utah State University in 2002.

I have made mortality a central part of my life, as a volunteer caregiver for the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, as a teacher in university and continuing education programs, and as a host for death and loss events in the metaverse.

Tom is also a Founding Board member of the Africa VR Campus & Center, in Nairobi, Kenya; and a supporter of the Khmer Magic Music Bus, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Tom and his wife live in the San Juan Islands with family and dogs.